Well, lots of pro-life people really do say that methods of birth control that prevent implantation are forms of abortion, and since abortion is murder then those methods are murder as well.
To add to what’s been posted, about 10 million children under the age of 5 die every year, mostly of preventable causes in poor countries. The first world might do well to reflect on it’s culpability for this before it starts throwing murderer around too loosely.
http://www.cfwshops.org/download/child_survival.pdf
This argument doesn’t hold water unless you beg the question by already assuming the fetus doesn’t have rights that ought to be protected by law. If a fetus counts as a person, then anyone who has an abortion is definitely “forcing their beliefs” on that other person!
“Ultimately, it’s a personal decision whether or not to own slaves. If you don’t like slavery, don’t have slaves. Don’t try to force your beliefs on another person.” Makes perfect sense, as long as you don’t consider the rights of the slaves.
Emery, do you believe that the government or courts should force people to “donate” organs or bone marrow in order to save lives? Consider this:
From the link:
I searched google for a case I remember hearing about years ago, in which a five year old girl needed a kidney transplant (couldn’t find it, but found the above instead). Her father, who was found to be a good match, refused to donate. The child’s mother took the father to court to try to force him to, in effect, save his daughter’s life. The judge ruled in the father’s favor, saying that the state does not have the right to invade an individual’s body in order to save another. Now, I think the father was an asshole, but I agree with the judge’s decision. Just because something is a poor moral choice doesn’t mean that it should be illegal.
I have always been pro-choice for a variety of reasons, including concern for the welfare of unwanted children after they are born. Chief among these concerns is the idea that I could be FORCED to allow another human to use my body without my permission.
Having said that, I think it is very unlikely that I would choose to have an abortion (although there’s that old saying, “Do not name the well from which you will not drink.”). But the idea that any woman would be forced to endure pregnancy and childbirth WITHOUT her consent is as sickening to me as rape or slavery.
Except that slaves aren’t mindless things. A fetus is a thing, and deserves no rights. If you insist that it’s a “person”, all you are doing is defining “person” in such a way that some “persons” deserve no rights; something that does nothing but degrade the term and make it less useful. A mindless thing is a mindless thing, regardless of what you call it.
My point was that this was an unstated premise of photopat’s.
(ETA: I think Revenant Threshold said it better, below.)
Inasmuch as pretty much all laws limiting human behavior tell us what we are and are not allowed to do (what if I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with murder, theft, or rape?), claiming that we shouldn’t “force our beliefs on other people,” in and of itself, isn’t an argument for anything unless you’re a complete anarchist.
As for a fetus not deserving rights because it’s a “mindless thing,” that’s essentially Cecil’s approach:
I think the point being made is that the “don’t force your views on others” argument only works if the person it’s aimed at doesn’t believe abortion is an area where we shouldn’t act according to our own different beliefs.
In combination with other arguments, to persuade the other person that it is such an area, then that would be fine. But alone it is not a reason, just as “We can kill non-persons acceptably” is not an argument unless it’s already been agreed that a fetus is not a person.
Excellent explanation, Maia’s Well. I completely agree.
And when a fetus makes a claim for equal rights, I’ll listen. Until then, the mother’s rights take precedence for me.
The abortion argument sucks because each side comes from a different starting point, and each logically find different end points. Pro-lifers believe a fetus has rights, so abortion is immoral. Pro-choicers see a fetus as not having rights, so there’s nothing wrong with abortion from that angle. Honestly though, I don’t think most pro-choicers see abortion as good thing, but there’s only two ways out of an unwanted pregnancy, and many women aren’t selfless enough to carry to term just to give the child up.
But “the fetus counts as a person” is exactly the belief that’s being forced. It’s not a matter of belief whether slaves were people–of course it’s an undeniable fact that they were. But it’s a fairly obvious fact that a fetus is not a person because it’s incapable of thinking.
Pro-lifers think that there is some kind of mystical spark that comes into existence at the moment of conception, but that’s just a belief that people who think that personhood is a gradual process need not adhere to.
And even if they were, bottom line is, babies are fuckers.
I don’t understand why some people think that all human life is so highly and equally sacred. That’s bullshit. Some lives are worth more than others. The lives of adult humans, with family and friends and jobs and worries and struggles, are more sacred than the lives of little brainless tadpole people. I’m sorry, that’s the way it is.
Even so, I’m against abortion in the sense that I would almost always recommend against it (of course, nobody ever asks me). Because, indeed, that little tadpole person has the potential to be a fully-fledged, loved and cared about person eventually. Abortion is always a last resort and a shitty decision to have to make. The only thing I ‘support’ about abortion is the fact that it is a personal decision that the government has no right to butt their noses into.
It hasn’t been agreed that a fetus is a person, so by default it is not. And we can’t be required to prove a negative.
Why is the default that it is not? Surely the default is a position of unknowing either way?
And no, you can’t be required to prove a negative, but you can be required to prove that a fetus has traits which are at odds with its personhood. For example, that the development of the brain of the fetus at a certain point falls below a certain level.
I don’t have to justify it because I’m not doing it. And the people who are doing it don’t owe me any justification. It has to do with something that’s happening inside someone else’s body. It’s none of my business.
It’s not always better to be born.
It also has the potential to be Hitler. Or worse, Nancy Grace.
There are plenty of places in our society where we allow people to be killed. We may not like it, but we accept it, because as a society, we have judged that other priorities take precedence. For example: (1) you can kill someone in self-defense if that action meets specific criteria, (2) a policeman may kill someone if certain criteria is met, (3) the state is allowed to execute people, (3) the military is allowed to kill people if certain criteria is met. Simply stating that a fetus is “alive” or “a person” isn’t an argument against abortion in and of itself.
The way I view it is that we have an issue of conflicting rights. People have a right to control their own bodies, and the fetus has a right to live. When rights conflict, you have to draw a compromise, and I’m ok with the compromise being for few restrictions pre-viability with increasing restrictions after that.
Of course a fetus is a person. But like Cecil says, “So what?”.
The only way that matters is if you think that all human life is equally sacred. And if that is the case, there are shitloads more (real, autonomous, unambiguously alive) people dying daily around the world for unjust reasons that you should try saving first. People need to get their giant prying busybody noses out of poor women’s vaginas and focus on the real issues facing humanity.
On preview:
Sure, but we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Nobody looks at a cute little newborn and says “Aww, he’s got his father’s eyes. And Hitler’s morality!”
No, abortion should be legal because it is nobody else’s business, not because one of those fetuses might grow up to instigate World War 3.
There are two related responses to this. First, a fetus is not a person. That’s not something we have to “agree” about. All you have to do is look at what people do (for instance: breathe, ingest nourishment, have the ability to live outside a human body, etc.), and look at what fetuses do (none of that). Fetuses may become people (although, of course, something like a third of embryos spontaneously abort), but they are not people.
Second, nobody really thinks that abortion is murder. Because nobody wants to execute women who get abortions, and nobody but a few crazies want to execute doctors who perform legal abortions. They just want to stop a medical procedure. But they don’t think it’s murder, or they would treat the women who get abortions as murderers. And they don’t do that. Nor do they treat people (including most people who call themselves pro-life) who have used the Pill as murderers, either. So being anti-choice is obviously not about preventing murder.
–Cliffy