Bias, Babies, and Embryos.

Yesterday I concluded that "any claim that a person's analysis is biased should have two features - a plausible explanation demonstrating that the allegedly biased person misanalysed the facts and/or arguments, and a plausible identification of the influence(s) that are interfering with the person's analysis."

Two days ago, I noted that a friend of mine who was undergoing in vitro fertilization had referred to the fertilized embryos yet to be implanted in her womb as "my little babies." I further noted that upon hearing that she said this, I replied that her response was "insane" - meaning that no rational person who understood what a "baby" and an "embryo" were would come to that conclusion unless their judgment was biased.

There are many ways of demonstrating that embryos are not "little babies." To pick just one, if embryos were little babies, discarding frozen embryos would constitute an act of mass murder. Discarding frozen embryos does not constitute an act of mass murder. Therefore, embryos are not little babies.

The logical form of this argument is: P implies Q; not Q; therefore, not P. This is a logically valid argument form with its own Latin name - Modus Tollens.

Of course, my friend, and a subset of like minded pro-lifers, will not agree. When cornered by the argument above, they'll reject Q and affirm that discarding embryos is an act of mass murder. This is what's known as "biting the bullet." Virtually no one, including my friend, ever raised an objection to in vitro fertilization on these grounds. This means that virtually no one, including the small set of pro-lifers that I just described, ever believed that discarding non-implanted embryos constituted mass murder - I'm just spitballing here, but I'm pretty sure people would voice objections to mass murder.

However, when this subset of pro-lifers are cornered with the argument above, with its inescapable logic, they simply reject Q and assert that discarding embryos constitutes an act of mass murder.

Why do they do this?

The short answer is, they have no choice. They have to do this to maintain their view that embryos are little babies. They are committed to the "little babies" proposition for ideological reasons. Prior to being confronted with the aforementioned Modus Tollens reductio argument, they were able to keep their contradictory beliefs about embryos, little babies, and mass murder in separate mental compartments. But as soon as they were forced to choose, they choose the option that preserved their ideological conviction. And they chose as they did despite the fact that they now embrace a conviction that they would have rejected as entirely unreasonable immediately prior to being confronted with the dilemma.

Now, I'm pretty sure that my friend's sentiments were, psychologically speaking, far more complicated than this simplistic analysis. My friend and her husband desperately wanted natural children. They were also very conservative Christians who undoubtedly felt (or feared) judgment from others within their community. There probably were other factors influencing her thinking on the issue.

What is unmistakable, however, is that she, and the other pro-lifers who have faced this dilemma and have arrived at her conclusion, were not thinking objectively about the issue. My friend's judgment was influenced by beliefs, commitments, and feelings that had nothing to do with an analysis of the proposition "embryos are little babies." My friend was not only incorrect - she was biased.

Understandably biased - but biased nonetheless.

Any thoughts?

Joe H.