richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

298 THE GOD DELUSION
Secular moralists are more likely to ask, 'Never mind whether it is
human (what does that even mean for a little cluster of cells?); at
what age does any developing embryo, of any species, become
capable of suffering}''
THE GREAT BEETHOVEN FALLACY
The anti-abortionist's next move in the verbal chess game usually
goes something like this. The point is not whether a human embryo
can or cannot suffer at present. The point lies in its potential.
Abortion has deprived it of the opportunity for a full human life in
the future. This notion is epitomized by a rhetorical argument
whose extreme stupidity is its only defence against a charge of
serious dishonesty. I am speaking of the Great Beethoven Fallacy,
which exists in several forms. Peter and Jean Medawar,* in The
Life Science, attribute the following version to Norman St John
Stevas (now Lord St John), a British Member of Parliament and
prominent Roman Catholic layman. He, in turn, got it from
Maurice Baring (1874-1945), a noted Roman Catholic convert and
close associate of those Catholic stalwarts G. K. Chesterton and
Hilaire Belloc. He cast it in the form of a hypothetical dialogue
between two doctors.
'About the terminating of pregnancy, I want your opinion.
The father was syphilitic, the mother tuberculous. Of the
four children born, the first was blind, the second died,
the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth was also
tuberculous. What would you have done?'
'I would have terminated the pregnancy.'
'Then you would have murdered Beethoven.'
The Internet is riddled with so-called pro-life web sites that
repeat this ridiculous story, and incidentally change factual
premises with wanton abandon. Here's another version. 'If you
knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three
of whom were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded (all
* Sir Peter Medawar won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, 1960.