Couple more points. No doubt some pro-lifers are hard at work trying to make it less difficult for women with unplanned pregnancies to keep the child. But many are not. This is another thing that would reduce the demand for abortion. If any woman with an unplanned pregnancy knew that she did not need to worry about financial problems, IMO there would be fewer abortions. Shouldn’t we see a huge demand (equal to the demand that abortion be re-outlawed) for govt programs to provide the financial assistance these women need in order to be willing to continue their pregnancies? Shouldn’t the pro-lifers be making financial donations to pvt agencies that provide such support for pregnant women?
Other reasons for seeking an abortion are to avoid having to cut short one’s education, or to keep one’s job. Are the pro-choicers working to help pregnant girls stay in school? Are they working to see to it that all employers provide materity leave with a guarentee that the job will be waiting for the woman when she’s ready to come back?
An embryo or fetus IS a human being, from the moment of conception. It is a living entity, who belongs to the same species as me.
However, just because it is a HUMAN does not make it a PERSON. A person is a human recognized to have rights. The fetus has not reached the stage of cognitive or physical independence to have rights. A brain dead comatose patient is human, but not a person. An unborn has little awareness of it’s own existence, or a desire to stay alive. Unless it has those things, I can’t see how awarding it the same rights as a sentient human would do anybody any good.
Um, OK. So a pro-lifer who opposes a form of contraception that is also an abortifacient has unworthy and inconsistent motives, eh? In your opinion, of course. Gotcha.
Any other hypotheticals you’d like to offer an opinion on? How about pro-lifers who support neo-Nazism? What can we say about them? I bet they’re real bastards too…
Look, do you understand that speculating about the hypocrisy of pro-lifers is not a terribly constructuve way of identifying which side of the argument is valid? IMO, of course.
The main problem I have with legal abortions is that by the very fact of them being legal means that society has condoned it. We don’t have laws against murder, rape, robbery, etc because we are under the false assumption that by making things illegal will make them disappear. We have laws against these things because as a society we have determined that we want these activities too happen as infrequently as possible and when the do happen society has determined that there will be negative consequences for those that carried out these activities.
Okay, if you think that some forms of contraception are abortifacants, how about the ones that are not abortifacants? Shouldn’t their use be encouraged, and shouldn’t kids be educated about them, in order to reduce the incidence of abortion?
I have no problem with encouraging the use of contraceptives that are not abortifacients. Children should be educated about them. They should be widely available to anyone who wants to use them. IMO.
Now that you know this about my personal beliefs, can you explain why it’s relevant to the abortion debate? If I had answered differently, would that have told you something about anything other than my own personal convictions? Do you see my point?
Okay, good for you. You’re evidently one of the pro-life people who is in favor of some (perhaps many) of the things that would reduce the demand for abortion. I cirtainly don’t deny that such exist.
But the other kind exist, too. The ones I spoke of earlier. And, by the way, I would not say that they were inconsistant. Not at all. They are very consistant. They want an America in which few or no unmarried females are sexually active. They’re against anything that might make it “too easy” for women and girls to decide to engage in recreational sex. That includes abortion and contraception, plus availability of informaton about sex, reproduction, contraception, and abortion.