In this post I will outline the abortion debate to the best of my ability, with the strengths and weaknesses of both sides fully exposed. I have an opinion on the debate but will remain unbiased (or doubly biased, depending on how well my cynicism comes out here) so that you may come to your own conclusion on the matter. All in all, I don't have a vagina and will never have to decide if I want an abortion. If I had my way this debate would be purely left for the women in the world since they are the ones who will make these decisions.
Pro-Life
The Pro-Lifers focus on the fetus. It is a generally accepted scientific fact that after about 10-12 weeks the fetus can feel pain, has human qualities, blah blah blah. Basically, pro-lifers equate a fetus to be equal to a human being, an INNOCENT human being to be exact. It has not sinn-- er, committed a crime. To be pro-life is literally to be pro-"the human should be allowed to mature to the point where it is able to live on its own." By having an abortion the mother would be killing an innocent human being with science. I get to see an aborted fetus every day that I drive to work thanks to an extremely religious fellow who owns a large sign on his lawn. This man also believes women should be silent in the church and that the media is biased, which, as we all know, only one of those two is true.
In all seriousness, though, the primary reason people go pro-life is to prevent "the genocide of a silent generation." (See "Every Pro-Lifer Ever," 82) They see the potential life of the fetus and claim that denying the fetus that opportunity is unforgivable. Look at how we act towards convicted murderers in society. We see them as dangerous, as having given up their rights in society for the lives they have stolen, for their immoral conduct towards their fellow humans. That is hoe pro-lifers view women who have had abortions and doctors who perform abortions. There is some weight to this point in that a potential human life is being denied. Think about when you were a helpless fetus, unaware of the world around you and completely subject to the will of others; would you want someone killing you before you had a chance to live? Pro-lifers strive to defend these helpless people so they have a chance at living. The only cases that are sometimes considered as exceptions are rape, circumstances where the baby threatens the mothers life, and very early on in the pregnancy (too early to even detect the pregnancy, really.)
This is where I finally get to reference the essay by Eugene Mills, "The Egg and I: Conception, Identity, and Abortion." I f*cking love this paper, not for what it says but because of the level of douchebaggery involved in its methodical destruction of well-formed arguments. Please read it if you get a chance. Here is the summary provided by James White in, "Contemporary Moral Problems," page 133;
"He argues that humans begin either before or after conception, but not at conception... An adult human being is either identical with the zygote in the mother's womb or else the adult is not identicle with the zygote but came into existence later."
Yo may be reading this and thinking, "Alright, so life begins a few weeks or months after conception, so abortion could still be unethical when the baby starts to feel pain." I like you, and Mills likes you, so you can enjoy this next little bit.
If you decide to deny that proposition and say that life beings before conception, i.e. at the stage of an unfertilized egg, I say abortion is the least of your problems! By accepting this viewpoint you are saying that, ahem, EVERY EGG A FEMALE HUMAN BEING PRODUCES CONSTITUTES AS A PERSON WITH EMOTIONS, A SOUL, A FACE, A SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, AND A BUTT. EVERY GIRLS PERIOD THAT GOES UNFERTILIZED IS A MURDER. SINGLE WOMEN ARE MURDER FACTORIES. (I pray, beyond all odds, that The Oatmeal reads this and makes a comic about that last bit.) Yup! This can throw nearly every pro-life argument for a loop since almost all of them assume that life begins at conception. It general philosophical terms it is called "the problem of infinite regression," but it tends to be overlooked until a professional comes onto the debate scene.
The second, weaker, argument against pro-life is that those who support it are often only concerned with the child's birth. They do not bat an eye if he grows up poor, scared, malnourished, uneducated, etc. They only care that he is born. The stance should be renamed pro-birth. Being truly pro-life would involve feeding, clothing, educating, supporting, and loving him for his entire life, not just the point where he is expelled from his mother's womb.
The rest of the counter arguments to pro-life will be covered in the strengths of pro-choice. You think you pro-choicers are off the proverbial hook? No, no you are not.
Pro-Choice
Being pro-choice is to be focused on the mother. She is already alive and without question a member of the species. The baby she is carrying around is completely dependent on her for all of its needs until it comes out after 9 months. She has the final say on everything that happens to that baby (except for a miscarriage. She has no say in that... usually.) If the mother decides to get an abortion, no one can criticize her for it. As far as she should be concerned, until that baby comes out her it is just a big growth, almost a parasite. If she doesn't want it then she should be allowed to get rid of it.
Now, assuming you don't think every egg is a person (love that paper) and life begins at some point well after conception, early abortions shouldn't be a major issue. The mother should be allowed to do what she wants with her body. The child is technically still a part of her body, so what makes an abortion any different than clipping toenails, or removing a wart? From the pro-choice viewpoint, there is very little to distinguish the three other than where on the body it is removed from and what tools are used.
Pro-choice makes a lot of sense to those of us who weren't aborted since we need to worry about ourselves, our needs, and our own futures. There is an analogy to a lifeboat regarding population control and the distribution of resources. It boils down to the realization that, if we were to try to give everyone the same quality of life then most people would die from being malnourished given that there are so very many humans on the planet. Secondly, it is important to think about the life the child will be born into. Would it really be ethical to birth a child into a life with an abusive parent, a missing father, a threatening environment, or any other extremely difficult situation? It is an act of mercy in the eyes of some to spare the unborn child from those experiences.
Is it truly mercy to kill someone to save them from suffering? Is that not a choice they should make themselves? Sure, they will have to scrap for food and sleep in the open, hoping that no ones kidnaps them while they sleep, but they should be allowed to take their own life if they so choose... wait, what? Anyways, this is the potential life we were talking about earlier. Even though we may not think they should be forced to live in harsh conditions, they should still be given the chance to do so. They may be born into a shaky family who later gets divorced, and they may be scarred for life from their over-religious parents and not fully understand why they aren't liked by anyone in their high school, but one day they could go to college and find the love of their life. Yes, they will dump that guy for some douche in a beret and probably be miserable with that douche because he believes in traditional gender roles and sees her as a trophy, but she should be ABLE to make those irreversible mistakes on her own... b*tch.
I lost my train of thought.
God, I hate my ex.
Anyways, it may be true that an abortion early on is viewed as acceptable by most parties (looking at you murder-machines), but that does not mean an abortion at the 8 month mark is just as acceptable. Take a house being built for a needy family. The house will take 9 months to build and will be very costly to those building it, but it will not be completely safe until it is complete. The family has just enough resources to last until it is complete though. The workers decide after 8 months that they can't put anymore resources towards it, and since it is unsafe that they are required to destroy it (which will not cost them anything for unexplainable reasons... science, why not science.) Because of this, the family will die terribly. WHAT!?!?>?
Any reasonable human being should see that late-term abortions are nearly equivocal with murder. Although, I still would not consider it to be murder since the baby is still completely dependent on the mother. Technically she cannot assault herself, but the fact that the potential life was so close to reaching fruition is something many people will see as morally unacceptable, if not an outright crime of some sort. I won't scream, "BABY MURDERER!," at them, but I will question their justification for it immensely.
So yeah, this post is much longer than I thought it would be, but that is the abortion debate in a nut shell. Yes, I missed some things and there are some loopholes I did not cover. You're a fairly smart adult if you've made it this far, or you're very good-looking. Either way, do your own research on the matter. Maybe when I get more hits per day I will revisit this post and make it better. Peace out bro.
Steve
No comments:
Post a Comment