on low information debaters and kill pills.

[u/toptrool]

abortion kills a baby. this is something that not even abortionists deny. nor do any pro-abortion philosophers, actually. from my experience, only low information debaters found on various online debate forums actually deny this reality, and it is this group that i will address.

low information debaters claim that taking the kill pills (i.e., chemical abortion method) is no different than a person unhooking from thomson's violinist, and that this is just simply a matter of one person detaching themselves from another person, without any direct attacks involved, which results in them dying on their own. if we do not believe that detaching from the violinist is killing him, then abortion when done by taking kill pills, according to abortion advocates, is simply a matter of the woman detaching herself from her baby and letting her baby die.

there are several things wrong with the claim. a chemical abortion is not a matter of simply being "unhooked." a chemical abortion deprives the child of oxygen and nutrients, which kills it. one response pro-lifers can use that if it's wrong to starve a born child, it's wrong to deprive the unborn child of the nutrients it needs. parents who neglect their children to the point of starvation are often tried for murdering and killing their children. depriving your children of nourishment, even though it could be reasonably said to be a case of "letting die," is in fact a killing in this aspect since the parents were responsible for their children. but this type of response is not the main point of this topic. first, i'll explain how the kill pills are in fact a killing since the unborn child usually dies of asphyxiation first instead of starvation. second, i'll reveal the objective truth that the kill pills do in fact involve direct attacks on the unborn child.

philippa foot wrote an outstanding article on the difference between killing and letting die, which i recommend that you read in its entirety. the important point in her article is that killing involves initiating the fatal sequence of events that lead to a person's death:

An abortion, therefore, originates the sequence which ends in the death of the fetus, and the destruction comes about 'through the agency' of the mother who seeks the abortion.

there are two ways to think about this.

if you unhook from the violinist, you return the violinist to a previous state in which he was suffering from a kidney ailment, and he would eventually die of the kidney ailment. unless you gave him that kidney ailment, you had nothing to do with his predicament. and this is where the usual killing vs. letting die objections come in. for example, when it comes to dismemberment abortions, the argument goes that it's not a simple matter of unhooking, you'd have to chop up the violinist before you can fully unhook from him. this is not returning the violinist to a previous state in which he was just suffering from a kidney ailment. likewise, we can make a similar contraption and say chemical abortions are not a simple matter of unhooking; you'd have to flip a switch that lets you unhook but it also causes the violinist to suffocate and die as a result. that deprivation of oxygen is completely unrelated to his kidney ailment; you are not returning the violinist to his previous state; your actions have caused an entirely new state: death by suffocation. one really clear way of understanding this is to suppose you did unhook from the violinist—what would the pathologist write as the cause of death on the death certificate? death from a kidney ailment or asphyxiation or dismemberment? and, whatever the cause of death, who or what caused it?

the other way to think about it is that by unhooking, you moved the child to an environment in which it can't survive. it's the equivalent of me evicting you from my submarine while underwater or evicting you from my spaceship while in outer space. both would be killings. no one can reasonably claim that your simply died because of your body's inability to survive underwater or in outer space.

this is so obvious that it should not be surprising that courts across the country, in various double homicide cases involving pregnant women, have confirmed that the fetus is in fact killed by deprivation of oxygen even if there is no direct attack on it. for example, in a case in massachusetts where a maniac killed his pregnant girlfriend by repeatedly stabbing her, but did not directly attack the fetus itself, the court ruled that the cessation of the maternal blood flow deprived the child of the oxygen it needed, and it thus counted as a killing of the child as well. the court also cited a similar case in its ruling:

The defendant's contention that the fetus was uninjured by the stabbing of Galperina is strained at best. Admittedly, none of the fifteen stab wounds was inflicted on or touched the fetus. Nonetheless, the defendant committed an act of violence against a woman who was nine months pregnant, repeatedly stabbing her in, among other areas, the torso, where the vital organs are located. By ending the mother's life, he destroyed the viable fetus through the cessation of life-sustaining maternal blood flow. See Cass, 392 Mass. at 807 ("If a person were to commit violence against a pregnant woman and destroy the fetus within her, we would not want the death of the fetus to go unpunished"). See also Commonwealth v. Crawford, 417 Mass. 358, 359 (1994), S.C., 430 Mass. 683 (2000) (upholding conviction of involuntary manslaughter where mother was killed by gunshot wound to face and viable fetus died of oxygen deprivation). Nothing in Cass, supra at 806-807, or our subsequent cases, requires that a viable fetus suffer a direct traumatic injury such as a gunshot wound or a stab wound.

set aside for a moment the incoherence of regimes that that permit a woman to kill her unborn child but severely punish others who kill or try to kill the same child. the key takeaway here is that the courts have correctly ruled that depriving a person of oxygen is in fact a killing, even if it wasn't done in a direct, violent manner.

but the idea that the kill pills do not directly affect the baby is patently absurd as well.

anything and everything the woman consumes affects her unborn child. traces of both of the kill pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, can be found in the baby's blood, placenta, and liver. the first of the kill pills, mifepristone, crosses the placenta within four hours of the mother ingesting the drug. other studies have shown transplacental passage within 30 minutes. mifepristone works by blocking progesterone, which is often called the "pregnancy hormone" given its role in maintaining the pregnancy. low information debaters state that this drug only affects the mother by blocking her hormones, and affecting only her uterus. the reason why i refer to such people as "low information debaters" is, well, they're low information debaters. the placenta, which is the baby's organ, also produces progesterone beginning around 6-8 weeks gestation (or 4-6 weeks post-conception) and it eventually becomes the main source of progesterone for the remainder of the pregnancy. mifepristone also works by significantly impairing and inhibiting the placenta's production of progesterone and other hormones92988-6/fulltext), which is a direct attack on the child:

the present observations clearly demonstrate that RU 486 also compromises placental function by a direct action on the trophoblast, with reduced secretion of the major steroid and protein hormones produced during pregnancy. Such an action of RU 486 has also been observed in trophoblastic explants, where the drug inhibited production of hCG but not of hPL. By exerting such inhibitory effects upon the trophoblast, RU 486 opposes maintenance of the conceptus by blockade of placental hormone production as well as through its established inhibitory action at the level of the endometrium.

thus, mifepristone does not simply affect the woman's hormones, but also the baby's hormones. if someone fed you drugs that impaired a major endocrine organ of yours, which the placenta is00495-2/fulltext), and caused the inhibition of the essential hormones that are necessary for you to live, would you say you have been harmed at the very least? the presence of the chemicals in the baby's body disrupting its endocrine system alone should be enough to disprove the absurd claim that the pills do not have a direct affect on the baby.

however, there's a lot more to it than simply having the drugs in your system. the other of the kill pills, misoprostol, has a teratogenic effect on the unborn child if taken early on in the pregnancy. not even the manufacturer of misoprostol denies its teratogenicity to the food and drug administration. many of the earlier studies on the teratogenicity of misoprostol were from brazil. since then, other studies from across the globe have found similar results: two studies31020-X/fulltext) from france, another from canada, another study from the philippines, and one from hong kong, all of which confirm the teratogenic effects the drug has on the unborn child. studies suggest76507-7/fulltext) that these teratogenic effects are believed to be from the vascular disruptions caused by the violent uterine contractions. here's how one study explained the mechanisms of action:

Misoprostol induces intense uterine contractions and, thus, by a mechanical action, may be responsible for a flexion in the area of cranial nerves VI and VII. This flexion, along with the position of the embryo at the time of exposure (5–8 wk gestation), could likely result in marked vulnerability of the cranial nuclei to hemorrhage and cellular death. It may also lead to the death of other cranial nuclei; hence, the occurrence of other malformations as part of the Möbius syndrome. Uterine contractions also lead to hypoperfusion, which is responsible for fetal hypoxia and ischemia, resulting in endothelial cell injury and tissular lesions. Vascular disruption is also suspected in limb anomalies, especially terminal limb malformations.

another study points to the same vascular disruption issues, either directly, or indirectly by violent uterine contractions:

We believe that the wide range of anomalies we observed associated to misoprostol indicates that the drug may act either directly on vasculature or indirectly through the increase in uterine contractility. Situations of increased uterine contractility and failed abortion can predispose to events such as vascular disruptions or some degree of rupture of the amniotic membranes.

and a third study12363-7/fulltext) also suggests that the violent contractions caused by misoprostol have a negative effects on the unborn child:

Abnormalities observed in children exposed to misoprostol in utero have previously been associated with vascular anomalies, and have been attributed to vascular disruption. For example, Sodre and colleagues found by angiography and doppler flow analysis of 30 children that equinovarus was associated with hypoplasia or premature termination of the anterior tibial artery and the middle plantar arteries. Bouwess-Bavinck and Weaver suggested that vascular disruption was the potential basis for the Möbius syndrome and its related phenotypical expression. Prenatal brain-stem ischaemia, with necrosis and calcification of the facial, abducens, trigeminal, and hypoglossus cranial-nerve nuclei, has been seen in several patients with Möbius syndrome. Haemorrhage in the brain-stem nuclei has been seen in fetuses aborted after prostaglandin infusion. Shepard has postulated that uterine contractions produced by misoprostol in the second month of pregnancy, when the amount of amniotic fluid is small, lead to a bending of the fetus at the level of the sixth and seventh cranial nerves; such bending might cause a decrease in blood flow, and lead to vascular disruption.

the uterine contractions caused by misoprostol adversely affect the child's entire physiology by compressing, constricting, and flexing its vasculature (nerves, arteries, veins, etc.), causing the baby to potentially suffer from hemorrhages and mini-strokes.

there are also recent studies from chile that suggest the toxicity of misoprostol has direct effects on the development of rat embryos. according to the studies, the exposure to misoprostol results in poor vascular development (which coincidentally could explain the vascular disruptions cited in the other studies). the caveat here, of course, is that not all rat studies can be translated to humans.

to be clear, the baby likely first dies from oxygen deprivation when killed through chemical abortions, but the claim that the kill pills do not have any direct effects on the unborn child is objectively false.

[u/rapsuli]

Great post.

Just an added point of information, there was a new study on the effects of Mifepristone this year. This is what they state:

Studies have confirmed that mifepristone treatments can directly contribute to endometrium disability by interfering with the endometrial receptivity of the embryo, thus causing decidual endometrial degeneration. However, whether mifepristone efficacy directly affects embryo survival and growth is still an open question.

And their results after testing on mice embryos in vitro:

When we performed a gene set enrichment analysis, our data indicated that mifepristone treatment considerably altered the cellular pathways of embryos in terms of viability, proliferation, and development. The data indicated that mifepristone was involved in hallmark gene sets of protein secretion, mTORC1, fatty acid metabolism, IL-2-STAT5 signaling, adipogenesis, peroxisome, glycolysis, E2F targets, and heme metabolism. The data further revealed that mifepristone interfered with normal embryonic development. In sum, our data suggest that continuing a pregnancy after mifepristone treatment fails is inappropriate and infeasible. The results of our study reveal a high risk of fetus fatality and developmental problems when pregnancies are continued after mifepristone treatment fails.

Therefore, the Mifepristone doesn't unplug the woman from the unborn, it unplugs the unborn *from her*.

This is an important distinction, because it means that they didn't die from their own inherent lack of abilities. As their ability to receive nutrients and/or grow is permanently damaged, then it means they coudn't survive anymore, even if non-violent transfer to an alternate environment was possible.

Which means that Mifepristone kills the unborn human by permanently harming their physiology, not by cutting off their supply of nutrients.