This is a comment by patrick on the post “The Modern Attack on Reproductive Rights“.
I disagree with everything you say, but will only comment on a few things. When a sperm enters an egg, something amazing happens. That egg now has it’s own unique genetic code. Yes, I will fall on that. No, I am not religious at all. I am just against senseless killing and murder, and abortion is certainly murder.
It is the extermination of unique individuals with genetic codes (albeit dependent on a mother while in fetal state, with or without feelings of fear) ultimately on a path to becoming a fully developed baby if everything is gestationally within normal limits.
Dear writer, you must examine your argument and ask yourself if there is a way to “boil it down” further. Aren’t sleeping people or people in comas without feeling that we can see or somehow acknowledge? I am no sleep or coma specialist, but I have never seen or heard of a sleeping person or someone in a coma record what they were feeling while unconscious.
Have you?
Photo credit: Flickr / janineomg
I say what I say to everyone who’s against abortion: prove to me that you’re categorically in favor of comprehensive sex education and widely-available low-cost contraception, or you have no right to expect anyone to take your opinion seriously. Multiple thorough studies have been conducted that show that making abortion illegal does not change the per capita abortion rate one whit. The only, I repeat ONLY, things that correlate to reduced abortion rates are sex ed and contraception. In the world of empirical data, you must support those wholeheartedly if you actually want lower rates of abortion. Otherwise you’re just… Read more »
That’s odd. The pro-choice folks argue that ‘barriers’ such as waiting periods or shutting off state medicare funding actually prevent women from getting abortions. You’re claiming that legal prohibition wouldn’t affect the rate one bit. Can’t both be right.
BTW- When you meet pro-lifers who are for comprehensive sex ed and availability of contraception, what happens? All you’ve done is say that some pro-lifers seem to you to be inconsistent or ill-informed, but that says nothing whatever about the merits of the pro-life position itself.
Sorry Ben, whatever your emotional response this is also a definition problem, murder is the unlawful premeditated killing of another. So as I said,depends on where you live and individual circumstance. Senseless is maybe true the way you put it but what about severe or terminal disability detected in the fetus? what about rape? And my point was that from the point of view of the person making the decision it obviously makes sense or they would not do it, whether it makes sense to others or not it is inflammatory and unfair to accuse women faced with this of… Read more »
I think Ben made a good point: if you believe that once you became a living human organism, you started to have human rights, then abortion is murder. Obviously if you think that personhood is necessary for human rights, then it wouldn’t be considered murder. Saying that something isn’t murder because of the law is a cheap semantic argument. While it’s not acknowledged in most dictionaries, it is common usage to use the term murder for something which one thinks ought to be murder, but actually isn’t because of (from the speakers POV) unjust law. Two examples in situations outside… Read more »
I am quite socially liberal, and not religious to any extent either, but yet I am very pro-life. Although devote religious groups and Republicans are indeed usually the most vocal pro-life people, they are hardly the only ones out there. As a social liberal, I believe in basic rights to ALL people, regardless of race, gender, orientation, age, disability, or anything else. So why would I believe in denying the most basic right we can have to a group based on the inconvenience of their birth-status? There are plenty of other people who can be considered inconvenient but yet we… Read more »
Just to clarify, I’m not saying that there is no reasonable use for surrogates, in vitro etc.
Hi Ben. I’m socially liberal, very pro-life, and an atheist with a strong belief that religious laws are unjust and the state must remain secular. I’ve met pro-lifers whom I didn’t get along with because they did fit the stereotype, but the movement isn’t monolithic. You’re not alone by any means. It’s just that the others yell louder and get more press. Through the magic of social networking we “non-stereotypical” pro-lifers are beginning to organize. If you’re interested, let me know and I can help you connect with groups where your views would fit in perfectly.
I’d recommend this group as one such example:
http://secularprolife.org/index.php
I tend to be a pragmatist about abortion issues, which endears me to neither pro-life nor pro-choice activists. Even if for the sake of argument I agreed that all abortions are equivalent to murder (just positing that for the moment), there are reasonable limits to how far society should go to prevent a murder. The kind of surveillance, law enforcement, and government power needed to prevent and/or prosecute every abortion would be horrible to contemplate. The difference between a spontaneous miscarriage and an induced miscarriage is very hard to see. If there is a suspicion of an abortion, do the… Read more »
I don’t believe any sensible pro-life person would disagree with you. Now the non-sensible ones however…
Okay, so extending that a bit…say I go rock climbing on a dangerous mountain face while pregnant, fall and lose the baby/fetus after falling because I did not bring sufficient equipment. Should I be charged with criminal negligence???
“Certainly murder”? Premeditated, yes, but unlawful? depends where you live, nothing certain there, you are stating opinion as fact. Senseless is also interesting, the decision to kill an unborn is a tough one and rarely senseless, we kill animals and each other all the time for reasons of survival, self defense and so on. While not the same, abortion is similar. In my limited experience most women who make the choice do so after deep and painful consideration or the reasons are so compelling that little thought is needed. The use of words like murder and the ranting of the… Read more »
“we kill animals and each other all the time for reasons of survival, self defense and so on. While not the same, abortion is similar.” – I don’t see how abortion is similar to self-defense or killing to survive. It’s generally about avoiding an unwanted burden. That doesn’t mean it’s not a serious matter, but it’s not a matter of life and death. “The issue is distorted and hard to unpack, Peter Singer is very good on this, confronting and thought provoking. I commend his work to you.” – Peter Singer takes the same view as Michael Tooley. You may… Read more »
Yet another example of why our schools are failing us in promoting scientific literacy, and why we should probably start teaching epistemology and morality in high school as well.
I agree to all of that- except I happen to think that doing those things would drive down public tolerance for a “right to abortion”.
Difference is sleeping/coma patients have already experienced some form of consciousness.
That’s a difference sure, but one needs to make a case that it’s a morally important difference, and that’s a more difficult task than you probably think it is.