Wednesday, March, 07, 2007 8:15 PM
Libertybob
writes:
Abortion Here, or there. Doesn't matter
FLM:
I'll respond on both sites. Whichever you prefer to post at.
Meanwhile,
"I find it inconsistent to (1) maintain that human life, humanity, begins at the instant of conception and (2) to be unconcerned with all of the human beings who fail to implant in the uterine wall. I think that any person who believes (1) should also be striving to save all the people dying via (2).
Some people have responded to me with what you quote above from my previous post. Does that make more sense? Perhaps instead of 'answer', the last word of mine that you quoted should have been 'counter-argument'."
-- Ah. Now I understand what you meant. Furthermore, I may even agree with you about that. I addressed this in my post, which is why the name of it was "it isn't about when life begins." As you said, and as I state there, many pregnancies (over 50%, in fact. See my blog posting...) are never viable for either failure to implant or genetic aberrations that make them incompatible with life. This is why I said in my post that it is mostly a religious stance about whether life begins at conception. To say such, one also must admit that God Himself is responsible for the majority of fetal demise that occurs. Therefore, I fully agree that we should do all in our power to save your group 2), however, I don't feel it is acceptable to terminate an otherwise healthy pregnancy. In that sense, one is changing what otherwise would have happened. And I think that is wrong, whether arguing from an ethical or theological position.
"I don't doubt that this happens, and I do not belittle the people who react this way to a miscarriage. Yet I know that this is the exception rather than the rule. Almost all headstones in any cemetery have positive lifespans engraved upon them."
-- True, but my point was that we don't not grieve for them. Your original post seemed to imply otherwise.
"I don't think you grasp my point. We should mourn tragedies like the death on small children.
The fact that we don't mourn miscarriages that way (with rare exceptions as noted above) shows that we as a society overwhelmingly don't think of the miscarried fetus as a child. We are thus hypocrites when we hold a woman seeking an abortion to a different standard."
-- I disconcur. First of all, "we as a society" spend millions in neonatal intensive care units, striving to help children survive. Doctors and Nurses spend lifetimes for just such a goal, and we have pushed the point of viability back farther and farther. What kind of society does such things and professes to value life, and yet should accept allowing a child who would otherwise be born to be aborted? Thus, we are not hypocrites to hold women seeking abortions to different standards when they seek an abortion. We are trying to prevent the same tragedy of miscarriage. Abortion is worse precisely because it isn't a tragedy that happened, but because someone causes it to happen. It is the same reason why we differentiate between manslaughter and murder in the legal system. In both instances, someone dies. But one is intentionally caused.
"I dunno, maybe. But you'd have forfeited your right to say so even more completely than under the present circumstances. If you TRULY BELIEVE that a just-fertilized egg is a human being just like you and I having this argument are human beings (assuming we're not really good AI programs (I flatter us)), and you have the technology to save the half of them whose destiny otherwise is the trash can or the sewage system and you still don't do what needs to be done to save them, then you have even less of a right to tell a woman she can't take the morning-after pill. It's not a nice, simple, neat answer like the Pro-Life activist's answer (conception) or the ancient Hebrew answer (Head & Shoulders at Birth) but it fits the facts and it reflects the way almost all of us live our lives (when we are not (some of us) protesting abortion)."
--Again, I already addressed that in my posting, as well as my above comment. Tragedy is worse if it is preventable but chosen anyways.
"I think you really mean to ask at what point it becomes murder to abort. As I posted above, it's a difficult question, but it is also one that we have to try and answer in our laws and policies. For the reasons I've given, I find the Pro-Life position on what those laws should be to be hypocritical."
-- I contend that it doesn't matter at what point the fetus becomes living. It doesn't matter that one day it is acceptable, and the next it is murder. Not only is such a line impossible to draw, but it ignores that fact that a potential life would result. This is the contradiction that Crouse asserts puts the UN in a logically untenable position. I also notice you haven't responded to the root issue of her article. Either you have to say they are wrong about selective female abortions being an abomination, or that abortion is acceptable. You can't have both. You say abortion is acceptable. Therefore, you state that to abort a child to select a gender (or any other quality we could determine in utero, come to think of it...) is moral acceptable?
A much more consistent answer is that children should be allowed to have a chance at life. Period.
"I aslo believe that there is much more reality that should be considered and not ignored or denied, including the way that we as a people react to every other way that a pregnancy ends, besides abortion."
-- Again, I addressed this in my post.
Flaming Multiliberal Culturalist, You have failed to address two main points. First, you have ignored the main premise in Crouse's article. I wait your response. Secondly, as I stated as the principal argument in my post, you still justify one tragedy to occur simply because another does. You have ignored the fact that one tragedy is preventable, and done by choice. In fact, you refuse to call it a tragedy at all. I assert that every man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.