Author: Ophelia Benson

I’m still quivering like a struck gong. As I was on September 11. I take it personally, I suppose. (Which sounds narcissistic and infantile, but bear with me for a minute.) I love London, and I love New York – both of them. In a very basic, in the bone way, that goes back to childhood and adolescence. Both cities stand to me for freedom – for escape, adventure, independence, self-fashioning, possibilities. (What comes into my head – this is very absurd and hokey, but I’m going to be absurd and hokey today – is that moment in the [absurd and hokey] movie ‘The Electric Horseman’ when Redford is just about to set free his stallion in a hidden valley to join [and rule] a herd of wild horses. Just before he pulls the bridle off, he tells the horse, ‘Make something of yourself, now.’ Then off comes the bridle and away goes the horse. ‘Make something of yourself, now’ – that’s what New York and London tell us – at least in my personal mythology.) I grew up about 50 miles from New York, so of course it was our Golden City, our Oz, the place where everything was going on. It was an immense part of my growing up to be able (both allowed and competent) to navigate around New York on my own. I liked going with a friend – especially with my eccentric amusing clever cousin Steve – but I loved going alone. The freedom I felt! I can’t even explain it, because it seems to be more than the sum of the parts. It wasn’t just that I was off on my own in a big city with no one knowing exactly where I was. (Sometimes no one even knew vaguely: I would occasionally go without telling my mother, partly just so that…no one would know. Disappearing. Disappearing into freedom. I didn’t do anything scandalous or stupid – just escaped.) It was something more, and I take it that the something more was New York. Cleveland or St Louis probably wouldn’t have done it.

And London was the next stage of that, when I was seventeen. I spent two weeks there on my own – and it was like the freedom of New York squared, or cubed. Because I’d never been there before, never been out of North America before, wasn’t going back to Princeton on the bus at the end of the day – and because it was London. London’s not just any old city, you know. And it got into my bloodstream then and has been there ever since.

So I take it personally. And then, as I mentioned, I was just there, I know people there. I’m wondering if the nice people at Souvenir Press will be able to get home (but buses are running in Zone One again so they’re all right unless they left early). But even without all that, it’s just London itself. It upsets me, somebody bashing at it. And that’s narcissistic, but it’s not entirely narcissistic, because the people who did the bashing did it precisely so that people like me can never ever have that kind of freedom. In fact they did it to punish New York and London for allowing people like me to have that kind of freedom. In the world they would establish, people like me would, far from being allowed to roam strange cities at age seventeen, would be locked up for their entire lives, and never even allowed to know what freedom is. Death and immurement, that’s their Golden City. Well no to that.

Funny. Just last night I turned on the radio for a few minutes and heard Tariq Ali telling Seattle about Iraq, oil, one thing and another. Then he went a bit sarcastic about al-Qaeda – saying it’s a tiny organization, it’s a few thousand people at most, what can it do? Well that’s a fucking stupid question, I thought; it can do a lot; thanks to advanced technology and communications it can do a lot. Then he went on to say (near exact quote) ‘These things don’t happen every day.’ ‘Well it only takes one, Bub!’ I shouted furiously. And that was last night. Two hours before the first bomb went off.

No, these things don’t happen every day. That’s fine then. Not a problem.

I’m six thousand miles away but I don’t feel six thousand miles away. Comes of having friends, acquaintances, readers there – not to mention having recently spent time there. Tavistock Square, Russell Square…

Say a word if you have a moment, those of you in London, so that B&W won’t worry about you.

This article raises a great many questions.

Campbell wants a rationalisation of the current abortion laws, so that terminations are available on demand in the first trimester, but available only on urgent medical grounds in later stages of pregnancy…His conviction owes much to advanced ultrasound scanning, a field in which Campbell is the acknowledged leader…

Okay, why.

By demonstrating the advanced physiological development of foetuses, his images reignited the abortion debate last year, when the television programme, Life Before Birth, showed footage of Campbell’s scans, with embryos moving in real time at just 12 weeks, and apparently smiling at 20 weeks.

Moving, and apparently smiling. But…but moving doesn’t necessarily equate to conscious, aware, even sentient moving. And ‘apparently smiling’ doesn’t necessarily equate to actual smiling (whatever Jeb Bush may say).

A father-of-four, he admits his reasoning is based on gut instinct, rather than cold logic. “It’s very tenuous, very non-specific, and some people say it’s very sentimental, but given how advanced these babies are in terms of the sophistication of their movements, and their facial expressions, I feel it’s actually offensive to be [carrying out abortions], certainly after 18 weeks.”

But what does ‘advanced’ mean there? What does ‘sophistication’ mean? I know what ‘facial expressions’ means, but I don’t know how one picks out ‘sophisticated’ ones from reflex ones. Is that ‘cold logic’? But if it is – maybe there’s a place for cold logic when discussing these issues? Maybe gut instinct can be misleading?

“At 12 weeks the foetus starts to move around much more vigorously, make complex movements, touch its feet and toes, put its finger in its mouth, take stepping movements. Suddenly that is a big change, and you don’t see it at 11 weeks…”

It’s a change, but what kind of change?

Although annoyed his images have been “hijacked by the anti-abortion lobby”, Campbell doesn’t regret the fact abortion is now a hotly contested issue. “I feel slightly flattered in a way that my images have got people talking about it. The foetus is its own advocate. Before, it was all about care for the mother, and I’m all in favour of that. But that’s balanced with images of the foetus, which is saying, ‘Here I am, this is what I can do, this is my humanity, I’m a sentient human being, do you want to terminate me?’ The foetus now is part of the question.”

Okay – that begins to answer some of those questions. The idea is that the foetus (because it is moving around and apparently smiling) is saying ‘Here I am, this is what I can do, this is my humanity, I’m a sentient human being, do you want to terminate me?’. But is the foetus saying that? Would it be saying that if it could talk? And (another question) what does ‘sentient’ mean there? Are we meant to confuse it with ‘conscious’?

So many people told me they felt very emotional about it. I had thought there was a growing movement towards the recognition of humanity in the womb.

There again. Surely nobody claims that a human foetus is not human – so what does ‘recognition of humanity in the womb’ mean?

What about the charge that emotive images of early foetuses showing apparent emotional responses shouldn’t be taken into account in considering an essentially scientific issue?…“Of course it’s emotive,” counters Campbell. “It’s a natural human response to see something that looks and behaves like a child, and to be emotional and protective towards it, not rip it out of the uterus. It’s good emotion, not bad…The film [Life Before Birth] at least made the foetus look like a potential human being, as nice as a newborn baby. It’s not suddenly there and it’s cute; it was cute before birth. It’s time people began to love the foetus.”

But is it? If so, why? Because it moves in an advanced, sophisticated, complex way? Because it’s apparently smiling? Because it’s sentient? Because it’s as cute and nice as a baby? Because it’s human? Because people feel protective towards it when they see images of it? Are any of those good reasons? Are they good reasons when all added together even if they’re not good reasons taken separately?

I have to say, they don’t seem like good reasons to me. That’s not to say that there may not be good reasons, but these don’t seem to be good ones. Movements can be merely reflexive, as can smiling. Sentience is not the same thing as consciousness. Humanity is not in dispute. Cute and nice – well cute and nice seem to be what’s at issue here. It’s all about images, and emotional reactions to images. But images, like appearances, can be misleading. (Surely Campbell must know that – mustn’t he?) In short, a foetus may look as if it’s aware and conscious without actually being so. Now, maybe that’s not the issue – maybe that isn’t and shouldn’t be the cut-off point for abortion. But it’s not clear why movement or ‘cuteness’ should be either. At least not for the rest of us; not for the law; not as public policy. If the foetus’ own parents want to decide the matter on that basis, that of course is their business. But I don’t see why outsiders should decide it for them on that basis. ‘You can’t abort that foetus; it’s cute now.’ That does not seem to me to be a compelling argument.

‘X’ in this quotation is science, which has been temporarily re-named for the purpose of an examination of some criticisms of ‘science’:

X is “E-knowledge,” “obtained by logical deduction from firmly established first principles.” The statements in X must be “provable”; X demands “absolute proofs.”…I quite agree that X should be consigned to the flames. But what that has to do with our topic escapes me, given that these attributions scarcely rise to the level of a caricature of rational inquiry (science, etc.), at least as I’m familiar with it.

Take the notion of “E-knowledge,” the sole definition of science presented here. Not even set theory (hence conventional mathematics) satisfies the definition offered. Nothing in the sciences even resembles it. As for “provability,” or “absolute proofs,” the notions are foreign to the natural sciences. They appear in the study of abstract models, which are part of pure mathematics until they are applied in the empirical sciences, at which point we no longer have “proof.”…Science is tentative, exploratory, questioning, largely learned by doing.

So there! And who said that? Noam Chomsky. He said a lot of good stuff.

As for the cited properties of X, they do hold of some aspects of human thought and action: elements of organized religion, areas of the humanities and “social sciences” where understanding and insight are thin and it is therefore easier to get away with dogmatism and falsification, perhaps others. But the sciences, at least as I am familiar with them, are as remote from these descriptions as anything in human life. It is not that scientists are inherently more honest, open, or questioning. It is simply that nature and logic impose a harsh discipline: in many domains, one can spin fanciful tales with impunity or keep to the most boring clerical work (sometimes called “scholarship”); in the sciences, your tales will be refuted and you will be left behind by students who want to understand something about the world, not satisfied to let such matters be “someone else’s concern.” Furthermore, all of this seems to be the merest truism.

Yes, but how good people are at ignoring truisms when they’d rather spin tales.

This week’s Writer’s Choice at Normblog is Nick Cohen on Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman. Don’t miss it.

Although I like to present myself as an open and rational chap, I can remember very few times when I’ve admitted being in the wrong. Not wrong in detail, but wrong in principle. In my experience the politically committed rarely do that. We change imperceptibly and grudgingly, while all the time pretending we haven’t changed at all but merely adapted to altered circumstances.

Hmm. I don’t know – sometimes those ‘wrong in detail’ admissions can add up to ‘wrong in principle’ ones. But that’s a mere quibble.

The only time I realised I was charging up a blind alley was when I read Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism. I didn’t see a blinding light or hear a thunder clap or cry ‘Eureka!’ If I was going to cry anything it would have been ‘Oh bloody hell!’ He convinced me I’d wasted a great deal of time looking through the wrong end of the telescope. I was going to have to turn it round and see the world afresh. The labour would involve reconsidering everything I’d written since 11 September, arguing with people I took to be friends and finding myself on the same side as people I took to be enemies. All because of Berman.

The bastard.

Yes, one knows the feeling, or feelings. That ‘oh bloody hell’ thing (in my case it was more like ‘God I’m stupid’), that wrong end of telescope thing, that twitchy stuff about friends and enemies.

Terror and Liberalism is an essay rather than a history and its arguments come from the almost forgotten tradition of the anti-totalitarian left. Its central point is that Islamism and Baathism are continuations of Nazism and communism, not only in their fine points – founders of the Muslim Brotherhood and Baath Party were admirers of Hitler and Franco – but in their fundamentals.

A chapter – ‘Wishful Thinking’ – explains why so many are reluctant to see clearly and in their blindness end up on the far right.

Now that really fascinates me, because we have a chapter called ‘Wishful Thinking’ in Why Truth Matters. I’ve been meaning to read this book; obviously I have to hurry up about it.

Obviously, the socialists couldn’t begin to show solidarity with the German socialists who were being persecuted by Hitler. How could they protest at their treatment or organize parliamentary debates calling attention to their plight when they were making excuses for the Hitler who was doing the persecuting?…To see the old process at work, one only has to look at how a large chunk of the world’s liberal opinion has got itself into the position where it can’t support Iraqi and Afghan liberals, socialists and feminists.

There is a lot more; a must-read.