Abortion: Even the non-religious should be against it

[anEvilAtheist]

Well I would say that your view could be used to argue for Heroin use, at least once. Why you will not get addicted for just one use, it would be extremely pleasurable. I do not believe that most people would agree with this logic, although in these modern times many would live for the moment. As I age I have found this to be the case. One thing I know for sure is that once you lose your virginity you cannot get it back. The interesting thing is that young people will not listen to you about your experience, unless it conforms to their desires. You have access to many people that are happily married. Why not ask them what they would do if they could have had a do over. Then look at all the broken marriages and unions and find out what the values were in those relationships and see if you find a common thread. This is a big decision far bigger then buying a car, or house and in my humble opinion you should look into it a little more before you just throw it away. I will say most of humanity places a monetary value on everything. Many non religious people will tell you that those things of value the markets will define. With that NON religious perspective is virginity valuable… And it is in fact extremely valuable. Men all over the world will pay a LOT of money for it. The question you should ask is WHY?

There can definitely be very good reasons that someone might want to abstain; my point is that virginity is not one of them. I never claimed that people should do everything that’s pleasurable regardless of how harmful the consequences are. Hard drugs like heroin have very bad consequences.

Some men will pay a premium to have sex with children. Does that mean there’s something especially valuable about sex with children that justifies the higher price? I think people will pay a higher price for virgins because they have been taught by their religion and or society that there is something particularly valuable about innocent virginal girls. I think such a view is mistaken and has disastrous consequences.

 

[Jules_Winnfield]

Of course, it is always much easier to hold forth with much righteous pomposity on an issue like unwanted pregnancies than to actually do something about it.
To any reasonable person it is apparent that abortion is a traumatic event for all involved,hence, the fewer abortions the better.
I question the sincerity of many people who purport to care about the unborn of others, as it would be simple for them to help to radically reduce the number of abortions by providing decent sex education to our young and to make birth control products readily available to all.

Of course these people care about fetuses about as much as I care about Rod Stewart ballads, but they do feel much better after managing to convince themselves that they are morally superior to others, merely by having an opinion and to vociferously broadcast it on discussion forums.

Here’re two suggestions for them;

Don’t like abortions ?

1. Don’t have one.
2. Volunteer to raise an unwanted child. Trust me, there are plenty of them around.

All the best,

Jules

 

[Darkbloom]

I listed some of the things that make human life valuable in an earlier post. I think all humans that can think, desire, and feel pain definitely have moral worth. It’s not a matter of being a burden; it’s a matter of reaching a stage of development at which the human has morally significant properties. A single cell human does not have any of the properties that make it our lives valuable and I see no reason to think we should value it more than an adult chimpanzee whose brain is similar to that of a toddler.

And yes, it can be hard to know where to draw the line, as it is for many moral questions. The Catholic Church teaches that “the virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess” (CCC 2290). Drinking half a beer in a night would clearly not be using alcohol to excess, but drinking 30 beers in a night clearly would be. Is there some clear point at which it goes from being perfectly fine to immoral? Is there some point at which ingesting even a single additional molecule of alcohol causes it to become immoral? Or is drinking a certain amount just a little bit wrong, while drinking a lot more is very wrong? But does this ambiguity mean that anyone who even takes a sip of alcohol is doing something very immoral?

My objection doesn’t hinge solely on ambiguity, but that is part of it. Life is a process. From the moment of conception until the average expected life time, which is from the mid 70s on in the developed world, the human organism changes. You today is not the you of ten years ago or ten years hence. Odds are your body will have replaced practically all of its molecules in that time.

Clear human life is something above and beyond a physical process, and abortion is an interruption of that process, no more and no less than killing that person at 1, 10, or 100 years old. You stop a biological process by an act of your volition. That should not be a viable option in a civil society.

Comparing the immorality of drinking to terminating life is horrifying. Thinking, desiring, feeling pain (as you mentioned), or the ability sin by excess of alcohol are all predicated upon a living being. If you’re dead you can’t do any of that.

Even if one were to subscribe to some sort of arbitrary threshold for morality, it only stands to reason that the under lying principle of all morality have the most stringent of all thresholds.

But way more than ambiguity, it’s just horribly presumptuous to think that we would quantify human life in such a way. Dostoevsky wrote something to the effect that “without God, everything is permissible.” If we hold nothing sacred, if we deny the intrinsic value of everything, then there simply is no morality.

Nietzsche’s moral philosophy proved this eloquently, and he predicted that the 20th century would be horrendously immoral because of it. History proved him right.

 

[Darkbloom]

But more than a moral argument, being pro-abortion is more a signal about a type of world view a person holds. It’s like the person with no education in economics who pays no income taxes arguing for a tax increase on the wealthy. They don’t support that because they know what they’re talking about. Rather, they identify the constellation of opinions and postures a person similar to the one they want to be perceived as would hold and work backwards from there.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

My objection doesn’t hinge solely on ambiguity, but that is part of it. Life is a process. From the moment of conception until the average expected life time, which is from the mid 70s on in the developed world, the human organism changes. You today is not the you of ten years ago or ten years hence. Odds are your body will have replaced practically all of its molecules in that time.

Clear human life is something above and beyond a physical process, and abortion is an interruption of that process, no more and no less than killing that person at 1, 10, or 100 years old. You stop a biological process by an act of your volition. That should not be a viable option in a civil society.

I disagree. I see nothing inherently wrong with stopping a biological process. Whenever you kill a plant and eat it, you are stopping a biological process. Whenever you kill an animal and eat it, you are stopping a biological process. I am personally a vegetarian because I attach moral value to animals. I want to avoid bringing about the painful deaths of any conscious creatures. If I had a dog, I would consider it wrong to kill him and eat him. Not because the lack of a companion would give me less utility, but because he is a living being with his own thoughts and feelings and it would seem wrong to do harm to him. But I also don’t think there’s anything magical about something being a member of the kingdom Animalia, and I would not have the same type of objections to killing coral.

Comparing the immorality of drinking to terminating life is horrifying. Thinking, desiring, feeling pain (as you mentioned), or the ability sin by excess of alcohol are all predicated upon a living being. If you’re dead you can’t do any of that.

I was comparing drinking to abortion to show that there are some moral issues where you cannot draw a line between the perfectly fine and the significantly immoral. To take another example, imagine someone who builds a factory in a foreign country and pays her workers a penny a day. This would be very immoral, but paying her workers $100 a day would not be. There is no one point in between where it changes from very immoral to perfectly fine. Instead, as the pay approaches zero, the decision to pay them that little becomes more and more immoral.

Even if one were to subscribe to some sort of arbitrary threshold for morality, it only stands to reason that the under lying principle of all morality have the most stringent of all thresholds.

But way more than ambiguity, it’s just horribly presumptuous to think that we would quantify human life in such a way. Dostoevsky wrote something to the effect that “without God, everything is permissible.” If we hold nothing sacred, if we deny the intrinsic value of everything, then there simply is no morality.

Nietzsche’s moral philosophy proved this eloquently, and he predicted that the 20th century would be horrendously immoral because of it. History proved him right.

I would argue that with God everything is permitted as well. For any immorality you can think of, there is almost certainly some religion that has believed it was perfectly fine. What matters is not what people can believe while being a theist or an atheist, for people can be atheists or theists while believing whatever crazy morality they want. What matters is what’s true. Like you, I believe that I have a pretty solid foundation for my beliefs about morality. When I get into the specifics of my meta-ethical beliefs, it tends to derail threads, and I don’t need to prove any specific ethical system in order to argue that none of the secular reasons presented here for opposing abortion are any good. But if you’re interested in what I believe about morality, here’s an article that discusses the position I find most compelling: alonzofyfe.com/article_du.shtml.

I also think that the foundation of morality is no better under theism than under atheism. If God can make something moral just by willing it, then God being moral merely means that he wills what he wills. Some people try to say that God can still be meaningfully moral because he has a moral nature, but then you can ask whether his nature is moral just because it’s the nature of an all powerful being, or whether it’s moral because it’s consistent with some principles of moral goodness. If the former, then it’s still arbitrary and if an all powerful being had by nature thought murder was good and love evil, then it would have been so. If the latter, then a theist ends up grounding morality in something other than God, just like an atheist.

 

[Contarini]

Well to be frank

There’s nothing wrong with frankness. However, frankness is no virtue if not backed up by reason.

it IS the mother body

By what logic? It’s genetically different. It is in the process of developing organs of its own which duplicate those of the mother.

and it is NOTHING to do with you what she does with it.

Assertion is not argument.

A fetus is not a baby, it is a blob of cells.

Arbitrary definition of language is not argument either. How is a “baby” different from a “blob of cells”? Are you talking about the fact that an early embryo has cells that are not differentiated from each other? But this changes quite quickly. In fact, I believe that the word “fetus” is generally only used once the precursors of the body’s basic organs have been formed, at which point we are clearly no longer dealing with a “blob of cells.”

It has no feelings, no awareness, feels nothing, knows nothing.

This is true very early on the pregnancy. It ceases to be true some time before birth.

It is no more human than a sperm cell is a human.

You’re confusing “human” and “a human.” Of course a sperm cell is human. But it is not “a human.” Sperm and egg are parts of the parents’ bodies. They are genetically identical with the parents. When sperm and egg form a zygote, we no longer have something that can simply be called part of the body of either parent.

I am aware of the inconveniences of saying that a zygote is a human being in the full sense. I am not myself 100% convinced that this is true. But it is certainly no longer just part of the body of the mother (or the father, but no one argues that). It is something new and different, and what happens to it is no longer just the business of the parents. It may in fact be deserving of all the rights of a human being, though as I said I think there is room for doubt on that point.

Which means by your rational every time a man masturbates he kills 500,000,000 potential babies.

Straw man, ignoring the huge difference between sperm/egg and a zygote.

By the rationale of your arguments given above, abortion becomes murder once cellular differentiation occurs (it starts to happen about four days after fertilization, according to Wikipedia, though perhaps one could push this criterion as late as 10 weeks, by which time the precursors of all the major organs are formed), and/or once the fetus can feel pain and other sensations (by about six weeks, I believe).

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Much like i would never dream of forcing everyone not to eat meat, even although i think all life is precious.

You need bolder dreams.

If you think that the life of nonhuman animals is sacred (in the same way that human life is), you ought to want that life protected. Otherwise, why have laws against murder at all?

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Yes a fetus has the potential to grow into a child. However until it does grow it is still a fetus. When should it be classified as a child? I am not sure.

But if you don’t at least have a point after which the killing of a fetus/child is murder, then you have no ground for supporting any laws against murder whatsoever.

I agree that there’s room for disagreement on just where the line is to be drawn. But I’m pretty sure it should be drawn within the first few months of pregnancy, and I favor a point at or near conception because I think we should always err on the side of protecting life.

However that is not the point, it is not about what i want, it is whether or not i have the right to impose my views on others and in this circumstance i do not believe i do.

If not with regard to the protection of life, why “impose your views” at all? Why have any laws about anything?

Like i said before i do not eat meat. Now lets be honest, at the time a fetus is a few weeks old it is no where near as aware, or as developed as say an adult cow. It cannot feel pain like the cow, it cannot suffer like the cow, and so on.

This is a serious argument. In my opinion it’s an argument for banning the killing of cows, not for allowing the killing of the unborn. I do not accept it because I believe that human nature is a valid philosophical category. In other words, I think that the possession of human genetic material and the fact that an embryo/fetus is on a developmental trajectory that will lead to adult human status unless interfered with indicate that an embryo/fetus is an entity of the same kind as an adult human and is deserving of the same protections.

Recognizing that my philosophical assumptions are not shared by everyone in society, and that there are serious arguments against the killing of any being with a developed central nervous system, I would be happy to see vegetarianism imposed by law. I seriously contemplate the possibility of becoming a vegetarian, or at least of abstaining from eating certain other animals for moral reasons. (I doubt I’ll ever see good reason to stop eating shellfish.) But even if I didn’t come to that conclusion myself, I would not think that my rights were being violated if vegetarianism were to become the law of the land.

Yet you (presuming you are a meat eater, and if your not i am sure there are many pro lifers that are) feel you have every right to take the life of that animal. Presumably because the fetus has to potential to develop into a human, which you feel makes it better than the cow. On the other hand i think all life is precious.

“Precious” is not a very precise concept. If you are convinced that it is wrong to kill any animal (if you think it’s wrong to kill plants you are probably in trouble) then you ought to want this to be established by law. Why have any laws at all if not laws to protect life?

Edwin

 

[anEvilAtheist]

But more than a moral argument, being pro-abortion is more a signal about a type of world view a person holds. It’s like the person with no education in economics who pays no income taxes arguing for a tax increase on the wealthy. They don’t support that because they know what they’re talking about. Rather, they identify the constellation of opinions and postures a person similar to the one they want to be perceived as would hold and work backwards from there.

Do you think there is anything special about abortion in this respect? I think most people adopt positions on ethical and political issues without fully considering all the relevant issues.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

But if you don’t at least have a point after which the killing of a fetus/child is murder, then you have no ground for supporting any laws against murder whatsoever.

I agree that there’s room for disagreement on just where the line is to be drawn. But I’m pretty sure it should be drawn within the first few months of pregnancy, and I favor a point at or near conception because I think we should always err on the side of protecting life.

But is the point at which the fetus becomes a morally relevant person necessarily the same point at which abortion becomes wrong? I used to think that it is, but have recently been persuaded by Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist argument (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion). I’d be interested in what you think of her argument, since I’ve yet to find a really good response to it.

 

[Contarini]

I was comparing drinking to abortion to show that there are some moral issues where you cannot draw a line between the perfectly fine and the significantly immoral. To take another example, imagine someone who builds a factory in a foreign country and pays her workers a penny a day. This would be very immoral, but paying her workers $100 a day would not be. There is no one point in between where it changes from very immoral to perfectly fine. Instead, as the pay approaches zero, the decision to pay them that little becomes more and more immoral.

Right. So one can always draw a line between the perfectly fine and the significantly immoral. One just can’t draw a line between the perfectly fine and the maybe-slightly-immoral, or the slightly immoral and the somewhat significantly immoral.

I would argue that with God everything is permitted as well. For any immorality you can think of, there is almost certainly some religion that has believed it was perfectly fine.

First of all, while I love Dostoyevsky, I have problems with that statement of his myself.

But your argument isn’t a valid one. We are talking about the consequences of some hypothetical state of affairs (the existence/nonexistence of God). No one is claiming that everyone who believes in God has correct moral views. That’s a straw man.

What matters is not what people can believe while being a theist or an atheist, for people can be atheists or theists while believing whatever crazy morality they want. What matters is what’s true.

Right. But I can’t see that atheists have any way of grounding a non-utilitarian ethics in their view of reality. Given the link you provided, I gather that this doesn’t bother you–and there are in fact a lot of things I like about the “desire utilitarianism” to which you link. To address the problems I have with utilitarianism would require a whole other discussion.

I also think that the foundation of morality is no better under theism than under atheism. If God can make something moral just by willing it, then God being moral merely means that he wills what he wills. Some people try to say that God can still be meaningfully moral because he has a moral nature, but then you can ask whether his nature is moral just because it’s the nature of an all powerful being, or whether it’s moral because it’s consistent with some principles of moral goodness. If the former, then it’s still arbitrary and if an all powerful being had by nature thought murder was good and love evil, then it would have been so. If the latter, then a theist ends up grounding morality in something other than God, just like an atheist.

Neither of these is true. To say that something is “good” is simply to say that it is in agreement with God’s nature. God’s nature is not moral because of something external to God, but neither is God’s omnipotence the ground for His goodness.

I would in fact say that when I use the word “God” what I mean primarily is “that ultimate good by which all goods are measured.”

My nonnegotiable intuitions about the good exist, I believe, because God made me in His image. If it turns out that it’s the other way round–that the God in whom I believe exists only in my own mind and that of other human beings–then the only thing that would change would be my confidence that goodness and existence are the same thing.

I have to go, so I can’t flesh this out now.

Edwin

 

[Lizziebel]

Out of the almost infinitely many people that could have been born, they were incredibly lucky. But a parent taking an action that causes one specific person not to be born isn’t necessarily evil. If parents decide to wait another month before conceiving their next child, a potential child is lost, never to grace the earth with his presence. If parents decide to wait even one minute longer before having sex, a different sperm cell may win out, and the child that would have been born will never have the opportunity to live. But such actions are not evil.

What you’re describing there is the stuff of the potential. Of course, if the parents wait that one more minute and a specific child is created and born, that is the child who is actually created. Maybe the other child, the potential one, is born in a different reality where the circumstances were slightly different, so that all of these potentials actually are realized somewhere? Who knows?

Anyway, what you’re talking about is basically…making a choice to solidify an actual creation/conception of a child from among all those potentials you spoke of. Making such a choice that results in bringing a specific potential into an actual reality isn’t evil.

But that’s a vasty, vastly different thing from physically destroying a child who has been created before he or she has the chance to be born.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

First of all, while I love Dostoyevsky, I have problems with that statement of his myself.

Then you might be happy to know that he never actually said it.

But your argument isn’t a valid one. We are talking about the consequences of some hypothetical state of affairs (the existence/nonexistence of God). No one is claiming that everyone who believes in God has correct moral views. That’s a straw man.

My point was that the phrase “everything is permissible” applies no less to theism than to atheism. If it is interpreted as saying that any moral view is consistent with atheism, then it is also true for theism, for bare theism says nothing about morality. If however, it is interpreted as saying that without God, morality can have no foundation, I still disagree because it seems like there is a reasonable foundation for morality without God. Also, I’m not sure there can be a well grounded morality that is consistent with mainstream Christianity.

Right. But I can’t see that atheists have any way of grounding a non-utilitarian ethics in their view of reality. Given the link you provided, I gather that this doesn’t bother you–and there are in fact a lot of things I like about the “desire utilitarianism” to which you link. To address the problems I have with utilitarianism would require a whole other discussion.

To be clear, desire utilitarianism is different than conventional types of utilitarianism in that it grounds morality in the desires rather than in the individual actions. It is different than desire fulfillment act utilitarianism which would say that the moral action is always that which fulfills the most desires. I think it avoids the serious problems that other forms of utilitarianism face. But I agree with you that this would be a whole other discussion. Besides, it is not relevant to the discussion at hand. I don’t need to prove a moral theory in order to show that no one has provided a good reason for non-believers to be against early term abortion.

Neither of these is true. To say that something is “good” is simply to say that it is in agreement with God’s nature. God’s nature is not moral because of something external to God, but neither is God’s omnipotence the ground for His goodness.

I would in fact say that when I use the word “God” what I mean primarily is “that ultimate good by which all goods are measured.”

My nonnegotiable intuitions about the good exist, I believe, because God made me in His image. If it turns out that it’s the other way round–that the God in whom I believe exists only in my own mind and that of other human beings–then the only thing that would change would be my confidence that goodness and existence are the same thing.

I have to go, so I can’t flesh this out now.

Edwin

Please do, because this still seems like an inadequate explanation. If we know what God is like, we can certainly use him as a measuring stick. We can call things good if they are consistent with his nature or bad if they are not. We could do the same thing if murder was consistent with God’s nature. We would then call murder good. But then it doesn’t seem like we really mean anything when we say that God is good.

You say that God’s morality is not grounded in something external to God, or in God’s omnipotence. What then do you think it is grounded in?

 

[anEvilAtheist]

anEvilAtheist;6586586:

Out of the almost infinitely many people that could have been born, they were incredibly lucky. But a parent taking an action that causes one specific person not to be born isn’t necessarily evil. If parents decide to wait another month before conceiving their next child, a potential child is lost, never to grace the earth with his presence. If parents decide to wait even one minute longer before having sex, a different sperm cell may win out, and the child that would have been born will never have the opportunity to live. But such actions are not evil.

What you’re describing there is the stuff of the potential. Of course, if the parents wait that one more minute and a specific child is created and born, that is the child who is actually created. Maybe the other child, the potential one, is born in a different reality where the circumstances were slightly different, so that all of these potentials actually are realized somewhere? Who knows?

Anyway, what you’re talking about is basically…making a choice to solidify an actual creation/conception of a child from among all those potentials you spoke of. Making such a choice that results in bringing a specific potential into an actual reality isn’t evil.

But that’s a vasty, vastly different thing from physically destroying a child who has been created before he or she has the chance to be born.

I was responding to the following quote:

Let me tell you my story. its short. i sinned and had a child out of wedlock as a teenager. that being said, i kept my child. when i was 6 months pregnant, a woman said to me (she knew our family) “how ironic! why don’t you have an abortion!” and i said to her, no! iam keeping my baby! well she had nothing to say to that! and 27 years later if you were to ask my daughter who is happy, healthy, and a wonderful woman as well if she wanted to be aborted what do you think her answer would be? NO. abortion is evil.

My point was that just like her daughter is probably very glad that her mother did not get an abortion, I am very glad that my parents did not chose to have sex one minute later than they did. I was only trying to show that the simple fact that I would not exist if my parents had acted differently is not evidence that it would be immoral for them to have done so. It had seemed like MerryCatholic was trying to make this leap.

I was not trying to say that deciding to have sex at a different time is exactly the same as deciding to have an abortion. They are very different issues and need to be evaluated separately. I just have yet to see a good reason to oppose early term abortion.

 

[Darkbloom]

I disagree. I see nothing inherently wrong with stopping a biological process. Whenever you kill a plant and eat it, you are stopping a biological process. Whenever you kill an animal and eat it, you are stopping a biological process. I am personally a vegetarian because I attach moral value to animals. I want to avoid bringing about the painful deaths of any conscious creatures. If I had a dog, I would consider it wrong to kill him and eat him. Not because the lack of a companion would give me less utility, but because he is a living being with his own thoughts and feelings and it would seem wrong to do harm to him. But I also don’t think there’s anything magical about something being a member of the kingdom Animalia, and I would not have the same type of objections to killing coral.

There seems to be some contradiction here. You’re a vegetarian because you want to avoid harming sentient life, yet you have no problem killing a child in utero. The only practicable difference is location, in the womb or out.

So it does seem you see something wrong with stopping a biological process.

Humans are far more intelligent than any other species. By implication of your own admitted logic, it is unavoidable to conclude that it would be orders of magnitude more immoral to kill a human because it thinks and feels at a much more exquisite level than other animals.

This all speaks to a very solid secular argument against abortion.

I was comparing drinking to abortion to show that there are some moral issues where you cannot draw a line between the perfectly fine and the significantly immoral. To take another example, imagine someone who builds a factory in a foreign country and pays her workers a penny a day. This would be very immoral, but paying her workers $100 a day would not be. There is no one point in between where it changes from very immoral to perfectly fine. Instead, as the pay approaches zero, the decision to pay them that little becomes more and more immoral.

Two objections:

1. Abortion is one of those moral issues where there is a perfectly clear line of demarcation, conception. We all know that a biological process known as an individual human life begins a fertilization.
2. You’ve seemed to miss my earlier point. I fully grasp indeterminacy. At what point does a person officially become old? No clear cut off point.

But my objection is the fact that ANY moral dilemma you may devise is contingent on life. Any question about when something is or isn’t wrong presupposes living agents. Hence, abortion isn’t simply another run of the mill moral dilemma, but is actually about the fabric of morality itself.

I would argue that with God everything is permitted as well. For any immorality you can think of, there is almost certainly some religion that has believed it was perfectly fine. What matters is not what people can believe while being a theist or an atheist, for people can be atheists or theists while believing whatever crazy morality they want. What matters is what’s true. Like you, I believe that I have a pretty solid foundation for my beliefs about morality. When I get into the specifics of my meta-ethical beliefs, it tends to derail threads, and I don’t need to prove any specific ethical system in order to argue that none of the secular reasons presented here for opposing abortion are any good. But if you’re interested in what I believe about morality, here’s an article that discusses the position I find most compelling: alonzofyfe.com/article_du.shtml.

To the contrary. Practically all major religions rely on the ethic of reciprocity. Insofar as religions vary from this, they vary from their foundation.

You posited a good secular reason to oppose abortion, as I cited above, you simply don’t apply that reason consistently.

And there seems to be no reason that utilitarian can’t also be pro-life. If you desire to avoid all unnecessary pain, harm, or death to a sentient being, which I take it you do, then it is simply a matter of belief.

You don’t believe that abortion would thwart your desire. I would (and have) argued that your belief is false.

I also think that the foundation of morality is no better under theism than under atheism. If God can make something moral just by willing it, then God being moral merely means that he wills what he wills. Some people try to say that God can still be meaningfully moral because he has a moral nature, but then you can ask whether his nature is moral just because it’s the nature of an all powerful being, or whether it’s moral because it’s consistent with some principles of moral goodness. If the former, then it’s still arbitrary and if an all powerful being had by nature thought murder was good and love evil, then it would have been so. If the latter, then a theist ends up grounding morality in something other than God, just like an atheist.

This is all well worn and ultimately tangential to the topic at hand. Both sides marshal good arguments. But regardless of the base of morality, abortion is still immoral.

 

[Puddin317]

I cannot believe (still) the length pro-abortionists will go to and the verbal gymnastics they employ. Again - talk to someone who has had an abortion and you will see that the aftermath afterwards would certainly give you pause to think about things in a different way.

A “blob” of cells… with a beating heart??

All of the above makes me very sad. In the midst of my healing process being 23 year post-abortion, I can speak to the truth that I aborted a baby, a human being, regardless of how many cells were present when I did so.

And now, my baby girl is glorified in Heaven with our Lord…if she was a “blob of cells” when I aborted, how did she get to Heaven?

If every woman entering an abortion clinic was offered an ultrasound before the procedure - she would change her mind instantly.

 

[Darkbloom]

Do you think there is anything special about abortion in this respect? I think most people adopt positions on ethical and political issues without fully considering all the relevant issues.

Yes. If you’re wanting to be perceived as an intelligent, free thinking person then it seems contradictory to label yourself pro-abortion without careful consideration.

 

[Lizziebel]

I was responding to the following quote:

My point was that just like her daughter is probably very glad that her mother did not get an abortion, I am very glad that my parents did not chose to have sex one minute later than they did. I was only trying to show that the simple fact that I would not exist if my parents had acted differently is not evidence that it would be immoral for them to have done so. It had seemed like MerryCatholic was trying to make this leap.

I was not trying to say that deciding to have sex at a different time is exactly the same as deciding to have an abortion. They are very different issues and need to be evaluated separately. I just have yet to see a good reason to oppose early term abortion.

Oh, ok. I didn’t see anything in what MerryCatholic was saying to suggest such a leap in logic, but I could be missing something. So we’re on the same page with those issues being different things.

As far as early term abortion goes…here are a few thoughts:

1. That child is a human life, regardless of level of development. A child who would one day be born and grow up like us. Who would live, love, make friends, contribute to the world and make his or her place in the world. And who, it is to be hoped, will be glad for his or her life just as we are for ours. And who will have others who love that person and are glad for that person’s life, too. Abortion destroys all that.

1. If a pregnant mother is murdered, the culprit is charged with double homicide because he/she has taken two lives. As far as I know, that would be the charge regardless of how far along in the pregnancy/development of the unborn child. So, legally, it’s recognized that unborn child’s rights to live were taken away in that case just as much as the mother’s was.

So, should the basis of the unborn child’s rights to live boil down to only whether that child is wanted or not?

1. There are alternatives to abortion, for example open adoption or a regular adoption to give that child a life rather than taking it from him or her if the birth parents cannot find support in their families or community to raise the child themselves.
2. Heartbreaking and scary medical issues can arise either with the mother or unborn child. Sometimes the doctors get the diagnosis…or even the prognosis…wrong. I’d be scared to think what the doctors might have told my mom if they’d discovered the genetic condition I have prior to my birth. If all she’d heard was the worst case scenario, I might not be here. Good thing that potential didn’t become a reality! And I’m blessed, not only with my life, my family and friends, and my work, but with having none of the worst-case scenario issues (e.g., serious cardiac problems).

With all the prenatal genetic testing that happens now, it puts parents in the position of having to make a ‘choice’…and even being pressured into abortion if an ‘abnormality’ is discovered. My heart goes out to everyone who faces something like this. It seems to me that the loving and right thing to do is not to destroy that child, but to give that child life, and love, and care.

Even in the most heartbreaking of circumstances, there are still alternatives to abortion.

 

[Tigg]

Although our Precious Lord is so very merciful, I believe there is one area in which He will NOT show mercy to us as a nation and/or individually and that will be the deliberate ending of life. It is heinous beyond everything else and the greatest of affronts to The Lord and Master of All Creation.

I’ve been looking for a thread to post this to. There is a new movie, that hopefully will come out soon. Won’t all of you PLEASE pass this around to everyone in your address book, and visit this site so that the independent film maker can track the level of interest.

One thing we tend to forget about is that abortion is a BIG, lucrative business as this film exposes.

The following link is to a new independent film which needs our support to expose the corruption of Planned Parenthood. The movie is called Blood Money and in order for the producers to get it into the theaters they need to show that millions of interested people have visited their website. You need only visit the website; there is no need to sign-up as a supporter unless you are compelled to do so. The second link is the trailer for the movie. PLEASE HELP GET THIS IMPORTANT FILM INTO THEATERS BY VISITING THE WEBSITE, then forward this to your family and friends! Americans NEED to see this…

bloodmoneyfilm.com/

 

[Lizziebel]

For the sake of those who are healing from the anguishing emotional aftermath of abortion, I just want to say that all who are repentant have hope of God’s mercy and healing.