Will Kill My Own Kids For Sex
or, to be more fair, since knowing when personhood begins seems honestly to be "above the pay grade" of the "pro-choicer",
Will Risk Killing My Own Kids For Sex
I believe that most "pro-choicers" really don't know when personhood begins. It should be pretty simple to see, especially for folks who pride themselves on being the personification of "Peace", that if you don't know, then you should err on the side of life. That they don't err on the side of life leads me to see their commitment to "Peace" as a smokescreen.
Be that as it may, what's my evidence that they really don't know when personhood begins? The only defensible justification for abortion would be knowing for sure that the unborn are not people. If these folks knew this, wouldn't we be seeing the proud display of slogans like:
Abortions Harm No One
There's No One In There
We Owe The Fetus Nothing
The Unborn Are Not People
What's The Big Deal?
A Clump Of Cells Does Not Have Rights
I mean, if PETA went off on some crazy anti-appendectomy crusade, to the point of causing violence, intimidating doctors to the point that they'd rather let a patient die then to perform one (note: I'm not drawing parallels to pro-life activism, just merely giving a scenario under which people would care what PETA was up to), then wouldn't the correct response be along the lines of "Appendixes Don't Have Rights, You Morons!"
And yet we don't see this when it comes to abortion. Why not? It can only be because the "pro-choicers" know on some level that what they advocate really does sound pretty heartless and brutal, and that they really cannot be confident that the unborn are not people. Hence the euphemeisms, hence the compensating smokescreens about "Peace and Justice", hence the escaping of responsibility by acting as if pregnancies just strike like lightning and have nothing to do with anyone's "choice", hence all the trotting out of hard-luck cases (and they do exist) which have nothing to do with the reasons 97% of abortions are performed, and hence the ducking of the real truth encapsulated in the slogan:
Will Risk Killing My Own Kids For Sex
3 comments:
I'm pro-choice, and I know that personhood (and rights) begin only at birth.
For the details, read the issue paper "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person," an issue paper by Ari Armstrong and myself. It's available for download at:
http://www.SecularGovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf
Thanks for commenting! The gist of your position paper mentions lots of "hard cases". No one I know or respect would argue that aborting an ectopic pregnancy should be outlawed, nor any other abortion that would truly be necessary to save the life of the mother. The beginning of the paper talks about all sorts of stuff like spontaneous abortion, fail to implant, etc. However, in essence, does making the argument that "Some people die in accidents anyway, so it's okay to kill them if they inconvenience us" really hold water?
The rest of the paper seems to argue for human dignity based on what a particular person is capable of, biologically and neurologically speaking. This is not a good basis IMHO. And do you really expect me to believe that a baby one hour before birth is a being with no rights, while a trip through the ol' birth canal results in an ontological change in being? You'll have to try harder.
I do thank you, however, for straightforwardly arguing the point. Your position, if it could be well-established, is the only possible justification for abortion. Everything else that is commonly argued is a sophistic smokescreen. I encourage you to keep pluggin' away from this angle. It has the virtue of fundamental honesty about what constitutes the key issue.
For you to sharpen your arguments to the utmost, I suggest engaging with the contents of either "Politically Correct Death", by Francis Beckwith, or "Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments" by Randy Alcorn, assuming you haven't already done so. Again, thanks for commenting!
Excellent points, Matteo.
As for personhood and rights beginning at birth, what if you're in labor? If, say, the baby is in the birth canal but not born, can you still kill her?
I can understand (though I don't agree with) pro-choice arguments that don't see a fertilized egg as human, but to say that people don't have rights until birth is chilling.
Post a Comment