No, you’re not on the right track with the memories thing, that seems out of left field. I don’t have any memories of being an infant, either, but I’d likely instinctively grab a baby before I’d grab a jar of embryos. Humans obviously have an instinct to protect children, and I don’t doubt that I would react accordingly. But the aspect that people who pose this particular gotcha seem to miss is that we don’t base ethics on what’s instinctive, natural, or “feels right.” Most ethical issues are more complex than that, and doing the right thing often means doing something that takes us out of our comfort zone. And sometimes we’re not able to do what we believe would be the right thing (rescue all living things from the burning building), so we do the best we can.
Are you sure about that? Or is it a cultural expectation?
Starving babies make a lot of noise. Frozen embryos don’t.
I feel bad for her in a way; she obviously understands intuitively that an embryo isn’t the same thing as a baby, and yet her religion won’t allow her to acknowledge it, especially in the presence of other family members. So she ends up in a lot of stress about the decision, even though the end result will be the same as someone without her beliefs.
Thank you for the clarification.
Re: By your answer I deduce that you are okay with abortion to save the life of the mother. Am I correct?
Yea, I’d be fine with a fairly liberally interpreted health-of-the-mother clause actually, since there is no sharp line between conditions that are life threatening and ones that aren’t.
Re: I look forward to a pro-life movement that’s pro-life throughout life. I’ve been waiting for such a movement for a few decades.
Pro-life Democrats do exist. Though they used to be more common in the past. (I’d like abortion to be treated, in American politics, as a ‘conscience vote’ issue like it is in England, where legislators are free to vote their own views without being subject to party discipline). One can be a Democrat, or a Republican, or any other party without signing onto every element of the party platform.
Hi, Other Sarahfeena. 
I didn’t mean to imply it was necessarily a biological instinct, but it IS something most people have. For all I know it’s cultural, or influenced by culture…not sure it matters at all in the context of this discussion.
I personally am generally pro-life on a personal level. I’m not in favor of anti-abortion laws, but I think it would be fantastic if we could reduce the number of them/need for them. But as inherently “wrong” as I think abortion is, I don’t think it’s instinctive to save random embryos. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a contradiction or hypocrisy.
Tru dat - never claimed otherwise - but in terms of being a meaningful political movement or having a substantive moderating effect on the pro-life movement as a whole, they’ve got nothing.
This used to be a lot more true than it is now. On the GOP side, it takes very few deviations indeed to get you branded a RINO or a heretic. The Dems are not nearly as far along in that direction as the GOP, but they’re definitely much more cohesive than they used to be.
Yup. Exactly the same.
Our very own Qin Shi Huangdi falls pretty squarely into this type of political alignment, though I don’t know if he considers himself a Democrat, he does seem to support a lot of Democratic platforms while still being strongly pro-life.
It occurred to me that I should clarify why I used that example: because unlike the other things I’ve mentioned, the first anniversary of the Newtown massacre provided a specific occasion and opportunity for pro-life churches to put up little crosses on their lawns to acknowledge the deaths of already-born children, the way they do for the unborn on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade each year. That can’t be said for the refusal to expand Medicaid, or to cut food stamps.
- Once again, this was not posed as a “gotcha”, which should be pretty evident by now by how I have responded to those who have given honest answers(as opposed to those that have tried their best to throw a monkey wrench into the process).
- I’m not “missing” why people are answering the way they are-I’m listening to the answers given. That is a major reason I asked it in the first place.
This is why I struggle about who to vote for. If I vote pro-life on abortion, I am voting for the aforementioned folks who cut social programs. I believe in a continuous garment of life which would call for life from conception to natural death, and quality of life the whole time too.
My apologies, I didn’t realize that you chose to be the first person in the history of the internet to pose this as a sincere question!
Since the “gotcha” thing doesn’t apply to you, then #2 doesn’t, either.
gigi My opinion is that the effect Republicans are going to have on the abortion rate is minimal, for a few reasons.
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The country is split about evenly on abortion issues (by some measures, around two thirds of the country supports Roe v. Wade with maybe a couple minor restrictions). Actual consistent pro-life views have the support of a large minority, but still a minority. Efforts to outlaw abortion at the state level in Mississipi, South Dakota, etc. got nowhere.
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Policy in this country doesn’t reflect the opinion of the average person, though, it reflects elite opinion. Among highly educated people, opinion is not split evenly, it’s strongly pro-choice. It’s very doubtful to me that the Republican elite actually wants to get rid of abortion.
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Overturning Roe would just turn the matter back to the states, and the states where most abortions are performed right now would probably continue to keep it legal. The only way to actually outlaw abortion at the national level would be to amend the constitution (which would require a supermajority of the population, so not going to happen) or for the Supreme Court to find that the Fourteenth Amendment covers fetuses and embryos. I don’t think that’s all that likely either, though stranger things have happened.
There are some reasons to think that in the medium term, the country will be more pro-life thirty years from now than it is today, but for right now I don’t think voting for Republicans is likely to do much to lower the abortion rate.
This is an excellent point. I believe conception=personhood, but I’m also pro choice. If you have a person inside you and you don’t want it there you should be allowed to remove it. I do believe it’s an actual person that you’re removing, but I believe it should be your right to do so.
As for the hypothetical-saving the embryos would involve finding some kind of cooler or something in order to keep them frozen in the parking lot while you wait for the fire crew, but I could just grab the two year old and run so that’s what I’d do.
In his book Ready for the Plaintiff!, attorney Melvin Belli quoted the New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in the state):
“The precise question for us on this appeal is: shall we follow Drobner v. Peters, or shall we bring the common law of this state on the question, into accord with justice? I think, as New York State’s court of last resort, we should make the law conform to right.” (Woods v. Lancet, 303 N.Y. 349, 102 N.E.2d 691, 27 A.L.R.2d 1250 (1951).* (Drobner v. Peters involved an unborn baby who was injured but who the court said was not “a legal person” when injured.)
*Note that this was 22 years before Roe v. Wade.
That’s what I’ve come to believe too – voting Republican based on the tiny chance it will do anything about abortion doesn’t make sense given the other ways in which they are much more likely to make life worse.
According to the anti-abortion movement, when a woman lies down to have sex, she’s agreeing to carry a pregnancy to term. As for pregnancy due to rape “Why should the child be killed?”
I once had a protestor say to me (and you know I couldn’t make this up): When a woman is carrying a baby boy, it becomes his uterus."
You know, I used to be all pro-life, but I never would have thought of all 5 embryos as being persons. That would mean that the implanting process would be killing all those persons who don’t make it.
So I could see someone arguing that the very process of having allowed them for transplant was setting them up for death, and thus the guilt applies to the mother (and father), not the person who doesn’t save them.