Your analysis is clear and well-thought out, but does not represent the position of pro-lifers. I agree that when you have sex, you accept the consequences, which may include having a child, but it also may include having to procure an abortion. The pro-life position is that the child has personhood, so the rape exception becomes harder to defend, in my view.
The lawyer parallel doesn’t work for me, because a lawyer positively and actively accepts the role of fiduciary. Whereas, for example, a couple using birth control that fails doesn’t accept that role, but has it thrust upon them. The parallel would be that the lawyer accidentally accepts the role of fiduciary for an as-yet non-existent heir when he signed an unrelated contract, but his pen slipped (or he didn’t see some carbon paper) and he accidentally signed the fiduciary agreement at the same time.
A couple that has sex, even with birth control, must accept the responsibility for that decision, like any other. Just because they had a chance of escaping it doesn’t change that. It’s just like, say, going 50 mph in a 25 zone. Most of the time you won’t hit and kill an old lady, and you didn’t intend to, but you are still responsible for it.
If you believe that life begins at conception, and that all human life is sacred, then the only logical reason for allowing an abortion would be the exception of endangering the life (not the health) of the mother.
Of course, you are an idiot if you think a tiny blob of cells you need a microscope to see is the same as a human being, or a newt-like creature is, but hey, that’s religion for ya!
You missed the argument, then. I liked the cite because it linked a variety of issues favored by anti-choice folks within a single moral viewpoints, such as “cutting funding for family-planning clinics, decreasing access to contraception, withholding information about contraception and condoms, promoting unproven “abstinence-until-marriage” programs while opposing the programs that are effective in reducing teen pregnancy, and criminalizing abortion.” They all fall within the “punishment” purview, and are in fact totally irrational and at odds with one another when viewed in any other way.
I’m afraid it is. You can analyze the philosophy at length, but the pro-life position remains determinedly indifferent to the real-world consequences of that position.
And a pro-lifer would say the same thing about you. He would say that the death of an innocent unborn child is a real-world consequence of your abstract ideas about the rights of women. He would say that no consequence is worth taking a life.
So you’re back to square one, again.
You’re not going to get anywhere in a real debate if you set up straw men and talk at your opponent instead of to him.
Conservatives in particular recognize (at least in rhetoric) that Joe Blow’s “life interest” does not obligate John Doe to involuntarily provide for Joe Blow’s sustenance. The analogy to abortion is clear if one is intellectually honest, which is admittedly a problem for the current crop of political leadership.
But if abortion is indistinguishable from killing a child (who has been born), as many pro-lifers assert, hat falls apart, because we don’t accept the idea that it is okay to kill a child just because he/she was a product of rape.
Analogy fail. Going 50 in a 25 zone is reckless behavior, and thus not comparable to sex with precautions.
A more correct analogy would be to suggest that a reasonably prudent driver (corrsponding to a woman having sex with precautions) who gets into an accident anyway (corr: getting pregnant anyway) should be required to heal naturally (corr: unwanted pregnancy) rather than use medical assistance (corr: abortion), because she could have avoided the problem by staying home (corr: abstinence).
But if you drive 25 in a 25, you can still be negligible for killing someone.
Even having sex with precautions isn’t 100% effective.
Are you saying that anyone who has sex with precautions, but gets pregnant anyway, is completely exonerated from responsibility for the pregnancy or resulting child? Really?
Yes, I know. I was disagreeing with your explanation.
I don’t believe anti-abortion advocates think a fetus should have the “same protections” as a person, which is how you put it. In fact, it is very clear they don’t.
Maybe it isn’t an important distinction to make, but “same protections” kind of makes it sound more reasonable (well, not to me, but you get the point) than “special unique rules for fetus rights that have little in common with the rights of people”.
And then I can counter with real-world stats from countries where abortion is permitted and from those where it is not, as well as challenge his “no consequences” stance by citing actual consequences, to demonstrate the pro-lifer’s lack of forethought. I’m not out to convince him of anything, though, just demonstrate the failings in his position.