dissenting futilitarian no. 9
DESCRIPTION
Issue 9 of a broadsheet for Canadians thinking about the 'Human-being Motion' (Motion 312)TRANSCRIPT
D EAR patient reader , you
rare & blessed person ,
you sw eetheart you: It is time now, if
we can, to expose Motion 312 for what it is.
Is it a reasoned plea for innocent
inquiry into human beginnings?
OR is it a dev ious ef fort (involving
irrelevant pretense about facts and science)
to remov e human rights from those
w ho hav e them?
To readers who have said ‘Yes !' already, what's
yer rush? That may be your conclusion , but
bring us with you. Let us view your EVIDENCE .
People have been saying that,
“The word ‘debate ' is being used as a cover for the
desire to pass anti-abortion laws."
Is the word ‘Debate' being used “as a cover"?
Then it is not True Debate that is under the
cover: it is a wolf in sheep's clothing. So let's
examine what is under the skin. If the Cry of
Wolf is empty, then let us see its emptiness.
We can expose an empty charge, as you know,
by hearing its case. Let us look carefully (not
hurriedly, dismissively, indifferently, but
with care) at the evidence for the claim that
the Motion is dishonest and deceptive.
miss TRUSTER
But first, enter MISS TRUSTER . If you
are thinking, ‘Oh, I think I will put
this paper down right now, because I don't
trust this Dissenting Futilitarian to do justice
to this case (who is this person?),' then you
are a Mistruster . And let us speak for a
moment with our friend Miss Truster , to
whom I say: - Indeed, yes: you don't trust me.
That is a fact, isn't it?
MIS S TRUSTER : Yes it is; you will just have
to accept it.
THE DF : But I do, I do: you are not sure about
me - after all, what have I done to make you sure?
MIS S T : Nothing.
THE DF : And who can be sure of anything in
this world? So you are ready to put The Dissent-
ing Futilitarian down and read no further.
MIS S T : Well, actually, I have already tossed
it aside with exasperation. It was very
annoying to hear you say that you are going
to look carefully at my evidence for the
claim that the Motion is dishonest. You - ha !
You make me laugh.
THE DF : But you have said you don't know me;
I am an unknown: you have tossed me aside
because you are not sure about me. Which
leaves me confused, because it seems in reality
that you are quite sure about me: you are
quite sure that I have no capacity to present
your argument fairly. Apparently I gave you
all the grounds you need to conclude that I
cannot present your case. - So what would
you read? A newspaper written by yourself?
MIS S T : Ridiculous! I trust lots of people to
write about this.
THE DF : Do the people you trust happen to
be people who agree with you? Does a person
begin to seem trustworthy when he starts
talking like you? I know that is not what you
are conscious of doing, but I am asking if that
is in fact what you do, if that is the pattern.
That would be foolish, because in that case
you are conf using two entirely unrelated
things : v eracity & correctness .
You think that if I don't have the correct
view (the one you swear is right) then I
can't be trusted to tell the truth about
anything related to this case (I must be
entirely unreliable on this issue).
But what evidence have you gathered of my
gross untrustworthiness? The evidence is that
I am unknown to you - or , to come to the
point, you can't yet smell what my view is!
But you have gathered all you need to dismiss
me! Miss Truster , you are Full of Trust, and
so you are an Amazing Irony!
(I have omitted miss truster 's response to
the above because it consisted, as you have
no doubt guessed, in a series of denials. After
all, it “cannot" and “could never be true" that
anyone would “be so stupid" as to “do such a
thing." Indeed no. Im-possible.)
But ... if Mistrusters were possible, we would
have plenty of people who, as they begin to
read strangers, start sniffing for agreement
or disagreement with themselves, so that they
can know whether to bother reading or just
start scoffing. A culture rich in mistrust and
dismissal. Ahh, home sweet home!
You must note one important thing: Mis-
trusters cannot Debate. No, not at all, since
Debate involves listening to someone on the
other side of the issue and assessing the truth
of what they say, and the Mistruster does
not do that. He or she does not listen: listens
briefly but quits and goes back to declaiming
slogans, because there is no point in listening
(‘That blowhard cannot be trusted').
And if you agree that Debate is a piece of the
infrastructure of Democracy then you will
agree also, I think, that MISS TRUSTER is bad
for Democracy. Perhaps we could have a kind of
zoo to protect ourselves from her: Come see the
Amazing Irony, the Danger to Democracy! Mind
you, it would be easy to win release from that
cage: just stop conf using accuracy & cor-
rectness ! You want to see if someone is trust-
worthy?É Don't stop listening but LIsten : do
they make a good case or not? Do they make a
case you would accept from an ally? The
evidence of that isn't that they are in your clique.
When people refuse to say ‘That is true' to
someone whose ‘pedigree' is unclear (or who is
actually, gasp, on the other side!), then our
Democracy (this land's solution to governing
difference) turns jaundiced and takes to the
sickbed - because now it seems that it is only
‘our kind' who can be trusted. (Bye bye ‘Tole-
rance of Difference.' We liked you until....)
the dev i ousness of mot i on 312
with the Mistrusters ejected,
let us hear the case for dis-
missing Motion 312 as a fraud, a devious
effort to take Human Rights away under a
cover of reasoned concern for Human Rights:
“When I first heard about this motion, I was appalled and
outraged, and saw it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It
struck me as an insidiously deceptive motion that refused
to acknowledge its evident aim: the illegalization of
abortion."
“motion 312 is a Trojan Horse attempt to introduce rights
for the fetus - thereby limiting the rights of a woman to
obtain an abortion."
“The issue isn't whether Zygotes, embryos, and fetuses
are human; the issue is whether a Zygote, embryo, or
fetus has RIGHTS that trump those of a pregnant woman."
What Motion 312 proposes, recall, is to consider
what “evidence exists to demonstrate that a child is or
is not a human being before the moment of complete birth."
Nowhere does it contain the word ‘abortion'.
In what way is Motion 312 deceptive? Would
you not agree that it is deceptive because it
does not disclose its true purpose:
“If the legal definition of when one becomes a human being
were to be adjusted so that a fetus is declared to be a
legal person at some earlier stage of gestation, then the
homicide laws would apply. As a necessary consequence,
aborting fetal development anywhere in the potentially
new adjusted period would be considered homicide. Thus
the ultimate intention of this motion is to restrict
abortions in Canada at some fetal development stage."
Was the Trojan Horse deceptive? Case closed.
1| decept ive intent i ons
I do apologize for toying with you, but
did you really think that ‘Trojan Horse'
business closed the case? You are so manipulable.
If a thing is deceptive then it involves a
deception - agreed? Was the Trojan Horse
deceptive? Yes. It intended to deceive. It had
an actual purpose other than the purpose it
presented, which was fake. The deception
was that it stood there looking like a peace-
offering to the Trojans, but it was not a peace-
offering to the Trojans; it was anything but.
Does Motion 312 deceive? - Well, the purpose
it presents is, as you will appreciate, not fake.
Its manifest purpose is to see if a human being
exists before birth - and everybody agrees
that that is what it intends because that is
the way it will challenge abortion. If we find
that a human being exists before birth, as its
author suggests we would (he has said,
“I conclude that science will show a child is a human being
at some point before the moment of complete birth")
then abortions kill human beings, etc. So if
the Motion is deceptive it isn't because of that
Trojan-Horse/fake-purpose business. What, then?
How else can you deceive? How about by
Ulterior motiv e , a motive “beyond that
which is avowed." You claim that your motive
is A (which you admit, and yes you do want
A), but your true motive is B (which you
always deny to be your true end).
At a function cocktail you meet the CEO of
AfriCaf, a coffee company, who begins to talk
about his company's aid to African communities.
YOU : Yeah, I've seen your ads ... the African kids
with the little slates. Sure, you are helping
Africans. - But, y'know, let's face it: your real
agenda is making me like AfriCaf more than
its competitor, which has no charity wing.
CEO : Well, I do want you to like us more
but - really I do want to give back to these
communities, which grow our coffee.
No.
9 4 AUG
2012}}
The DISSEN TING FU TILITARIAN {{
L ET T E R S TO c a n a d i a n s F R OM A C I T I Z E N O N T H E S U B J E CT O F T H E P R O P O S E D I N V E ST I G AT I O N I N TO O U R H U M A N I T Y
“ I t i s d u e t o J U S T I C E t h a t m a n i s a G o d t o m a n a n d n o t a W o l f . ” F R A N C I S B A C O N
B
YOU : Ah! So you deny that your real reason for
building those schools in Kenya is ($ka-ching$)
profit! You deny what you are really up to.
Now I know that you have an Ulterior motiv e !
CEO : But why do you say that profit is what
we really care about? We want both things:
yes, we want to be profitable; yes, we want to
help. What's deceptive about that?
YOU : The deception is that you don't want
to admit why you are building those schools;
you won't say that it is profit! You keep
talking about charity!
CEO : Well, I was talking about the charity,
which it seemed worth telling you about.
YOU : Your deception lies in the fact
that you won't confess to the one
thing you really do care
about. You keep hiding it!
CEO : But it isn't the one
thing I care about.
YOU : Aha! You deny
it, just as I said!
CEO : I deny it, yes. Yes
I do. The charity isn't
just a means to profit.
It is good in itself.
YOU : Oh it is, is it? All
right then: now we'll
flush out the proof that profit is what you are
really all about. Would you be happy with
just the charity and not the profit? Then stop
advertising your charity. When A cannot
lead to B, then I will know that B isn't
what you are really after.
CEO : But profit isn't all we care about. If
charity is a means to profit, it's just that
much better. Why not have the profit too?
YOU : You can't live without profit, can you?
You won't let go of it! Give up your profits!
CEO : But ... we're in business. Are you some
kind of ... - it's almost as if you hate profit.
YOU : Profit! Always on your mind, isn't it?
A A AI hope you are mad at me for writing ‘YOU ' so
many times - because you are not such an idiot,
are you? So why that dialogue? To raise the
issue of real intent and how we can know it.
“The real intent of Motion 312 is to bestow legal personhood
on fetuses as a way to re-criminalize abortion.”
Is the Motion a Wolf that slyly intends crimi-
nalization without admitting it? What's the
clue? What that dialogue shows is that, if we
are not to come off as an idiot, there has to be
some evidence that shows what a person's
real intent is. It's stupid just to keep
insisting. So what reveals that a person's
TRUE intent is B? It isn't that A leads to
it. (One thing can predictably lead to another
- gambling to pennilessness - without that
thing being your true objective.)
You have an Ulterior motiv e , about which
you are d ec e i v i n g p eo p l e , when you
commence A, and B is the only logically
possible result of A, but then you deny
that your purpose with A is B. - That is
what people are calling the deviousness of
Motion 312 . The author of the Motion says:
“m312 does not propose to deny recognition of women's rights."
But to that, people say:
“[in september] we will have to sit through another hour
of ‘debate' on something that pretends not to be about
abortion, but that everyone knows is about abortion."
Does the Motion pretend it has no bearing on
abortion? Well, its author does say:
“I am not shying away from the fact that the question of
whether or not a child is a human being is relevant to the
issue of abortion. It certainly is.”
Indeed. Yet the charge laid is this: a reassign-
ment of personhood and the attendant
criminalization of abortion is w hat
this motion intends , since this is logically
the only possible consequence of altering
this section of the Criminal Code:
“Either Motion 312 means to change public policy on
personhood OR it’s a waste of government time, taxpayer
dollars: Pick A or B, there's no 3rd option.”
“M312 supporters, Stop lying. M312 is about fetal rights,
fetal personhood, and criminalizing [abortion].”
“Supporters of Motion 312, and Woodworth himself, bend over
backwards with assurances that it’s nothing of the kind."
The Motion's author, noted one writer,
“is back lying about Motion 312 again, [claiming it] ‘does not propose to deny women recognition of their
rights'. the magic question, again: Why M312 then?”
The Motion's supporters, it is charged,
“will not grant [that] M312 would open [the] door [to criminalizing abortion]: if it has no public policy goal, it's a waste of time.”
A journalist reporting on the first de-
bate, in April, points out the MP who:
“stresses that the section [placed] in question [by the motion] is in the Criminal Code -
the one that deals with homicide.”
2| is the decept ion deeper?
b ut that is not all the decep-
tiveness charged to this Motion.
As I noted not long ago, I spent a little time
in an interesting corner of the Internet in
which daily ‘Debate' (whether Debate it was,
I leave to the informed) unfolds on Motion
312. A rather strange Debate, I must say, for
it was conducted only in tiny, fragmentary
statement-lets of fixed length, shorter even
than this sentence! Imagine a public billboard
(titled #M312) where citizens arrive several
times daily to post their comments, sometimes
replying to previous postings. I read with interest.
What began to attract my attention was a series
of comments giving a reason for rejecting the
Motion outright. That reason was the one we
have just set forth: Deception about intent .
“I’d say the Evidence is In re Motion 312 being a straightup
Personhood and Abortion motion."
I confess that at that time I was puzzled,
for it so happens that Motion 312 does not
use the words ‘person' or ‘personhood' at all.
And on that basis I was prompted to post
a ‘corrective' message: “M312 is not a personhood
motion." And so my roller-coaster ride began.
My reply received a reply, and it soon became
clear that the Motion was charged with a
second kind of deception .
“Motion 312 wrongly conflates ‘being’ with ‘legal person’.”
Allow me to explain the import of this, which
I believe I now understand. (You be the judge!)
When the Motion says ‘human being ', it really
means ‘person '. That is, when the Motion asks,
Is a fetus a human being?
it is really asking,
Is the fetus a legal person?
But, it is charged, the author of the Motion
does not admit this, and indeed wants to
capitalize on the perception that he is not
chiefly interested in personhood at all.
Hearken back to our little cocktail-party chat,
switching the names, and you will see that
the cases are somewhat alike: actual admission
that B is relevant. It is true that B (the
definition of personhood) is indeed an issue;
the author of the Motion has said so:
“If there’s no objective criteria for who’s a human being,
then personhood and the fundamental rights that go with
it can be defined in any way any powerful ... group decides."
But, he insists, redefining legal persons is
not the Motion's real and essential intent.
Its concern is human being s and the law.
CHALLENGER : Your deception [so you might
argue, challenging the Hon. Member] lies in thefact that you won't confess to the one thing
you really do care about: personhood. You keep
hiding the fact that that is your concern!
THE HON . MEMBER : But it is not the one thing
I care about.
CHALLENGER : Aha! You deny it, you deceive!
THE HON . MEMBER : I deny it, yes, I do. But I
don't deceive, because the Motion isn't just a
means of redefining personhood. It is valuable
in itself, even without that.
And so the drafter of M-312 has said:
“I honestly want what the motion asks,
and that is for a respectful dialogue and
an open-minded study of the evidence
[as to the point at which a human
being exists]."
“I don’t think it necessarily re-
solves the issue of abortion. And,
more important, I think that the
question of whether any law
should declare that a
person is not a human
being w ithout good
reason is a greater worry
than the issue of abortion."
But shouldn't that have been: ‘I think that any
law declaring that a human being is not
a person w ithout good reason is unjust'?
Isn't that what this is truly about? So the
Motion has been charged with a second
kind of TRICK : deceptiv e use of language .
É“m312 intends to confuse 2 concepts: biological humanity
and legal personhood. They are separate."
“Motion 312, built on a disingenuous and self-serving
misinterpretation of legal jargon, [fully intends to usher in] the Beginning of the End of Abortion Rights in Canada.”
What is the evidence that this Motion means
legal person when it says human being?
The evidence is, once again, that you cannot
examine the beginnings of a human being
Éfor any other reason but the redef i-
nition of personhood in the law .
“Once more, The term ‘human being' is a red herring in this.
THE Only thing that matters is legal ‘personhood'."
“M312 pretends that fetuses are not human. Yes they are.
What they are not is ‘persons'."
(As to a third deception - the wording of the
Criminal Code was based on archaic science,
when it was chosen in fact to mark this very
distinction between protected and unprotected
human beings - no evidence as to this fact re.
the intent of the law has been brought forth.)
And what is our conclusion? I cer-
tainly do not need to tell you; a
conclusion is what you can see for yourself. If
the only possible consequence of examin-
ing w hen a human being begins is a change
to the law concerning legal persons , then,
what is the conclusion that you must drawÉÉ?
Is M-312 a reasoned plea for innocent
inquiry into human beginnings?
OR is it a deceptiv e assault on existing
human rights?
Would the scientific evidence presumably push
personhood back into abortion territory (turn-
ing abortions into homicides)? If the crimi-
nalization of abortion is logically the
only possible consequence of any change
the motion would bring , ....
But I don't need to remind you , Wise Reader,
that in a Debate we hear the other side too.
What's to fear? Let the Concluding Conclu-
sion stand! Next issue: wolf 's clothing?
I am, etc.
1 1 D i s s e nt i n g f ut i l ita r i a n . b lo g s p ot.ca