Arguments against pro-abortion?

[Antonio_022]

So I began a little feud earlier with the argument “Is Abortion murder?”

To my surprise, we were outnumbered They kept arguing about how a fetus does not count as a life and how OUR RELIGION is justifying it as murder.

Help please?

 

[Seml]

Hi Antonio,
I don’t know if the issue is that easy to handle. In my opinion you can’t regulate it by law. There are so many pros and cons, I bet at the end of the day each and every mother who decides to walk down that road needs to make peace with god on her own, please remember that the guilt of doing it will also be on her shoulders her whole life.

 

[kantus12]

Clinton Wilcox is a philosophically erudite commenter on this issue. You can email him at
prolifephilosophy@gmail.com. I suggest you do it, he’s quite good at making clear the intellectual foundation for a pro-life ethos.

 

[tawny]

So I began a little feud earlier with the argument “Is Abortion murder?”

To my surprise, we were outnumbered They kept arguing about how a fetus does not count as a life and how OUR RELIGION is justifying it as murder.

Help please?

If a fetus is not life - then what’s beating.

 

[jonathan_hili]

I’d suggest a couple of points:

• firstly, if the foetus is not life, then what is it? Surely, it is some kind of life. If your interlocutors believe it isn’t human life, then they should be able to identify what kind of life it is; and
• secondly, you can avoid the whole talk of “murder” altogether, since murder is a legal definition, rather than necessarily a moral one. Try to stick to “deliberately killing an innocent human being”.

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

Is it not true that many women’s heads get all messed up after abortion? Like it drives them mad? Not “Crazy”, per ce, but overloads their conscious?

 

[Joe_5859]

I think this is the definitive book:

Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments

The pro-life side has logic, reason, and truth on their side. But that doesn’t mean there are not poor ways to argue the pro-life position. It usually doesn’t do anyone any good if we are obnoxious about making our points.

While it is true that abortion is murder, I’m not surprised that beginning a conversation with that question would elicit heated responses. It tends to immediately put people on the defensive.

 

[balto]

So I began a little feud earlier with the argument “Is Abortion murder?”

To my surprise, we were outnumbered They kept arguing about how a fetus does not count as a life and how OUR RELIGION is justifying it as murder.

Help please?

Well once you sit down and think about all the logical implications of various views on abortion you’ll eventually come to the understanding that the pro-life side is the logical position while the pro-choice side is almost entirely based on emotional arguments. The issue is how do you get people to the pro-life side? I think it would help if we knew what the specific arguments that were being made on both sides were.

From a philosophical standpoint, the Aristotelian-Thomist would say that a gamete has the potentiality for rational animality (i.e. humanness) which means that by itself a gamete is not a person but has the potential to become one if acted on by an external agent. They would say that conception reduces this potency for humanness to a primary actuality so from conception onwards the fertilized embryo has the form of a human which is never changed until death regardless of whether this primary actuality can be acted upon.

Of course, pro-choice advocates will dismiss all of this and usually say that one needs to have conscious experiences to be considered a person. So when I go to bed tonight does that mean that I magically become non-human when I fall asleep and then magically become human again when I awaken? I’m not conscious while asleep. Nor am I conscious if I ever become light-headed and end up fainting so I must not be a person then either. In order to avoid absurdities like these, the opponent would have to concede that the power of rationality or consciousness exists in the human even when it is not possible to exercise this power. Which is exactly what the AT theorist would say. But how does this not include an unborn child? Rationality is a power that comes with the form and given time will be available to the unborn person.

Here’s another favorite pro-choice argument: the fetus is really a part of the woman’s body. If that is true, then are we expected to believe that occasionally following sexual intimacy a woman suddenly starts growing an extra brain, an extra heart, two extra arms and hands, two extra feet, etc? Not only that but, following this line of thinking, roughly 50% of pregnant women become hermaphrodites for 9 months . Again, to avoid absurdities, you have to admit that the unborn child has a distinct body.

Of course, arguments like these need to be tempered with charity as other posters have said. There’s certainly a pastoral element to all of this but it is definitely possible to make a logical case for the pro-life side.

 

[ahs]

Here you go:

daves-ahumbleservant.blogspot.com/search/label/Abortion

"Yet some will say, “it’s not really a human person until…” and then some random age is given. But let’s look at the science of it. At the very moment of conception, a sperm cell enters an egg cell and the instant result is a cell with a complete strand of human DNA. There is the scientific proof of a human. But, is it “living”?

Yes, it is living. “Proof”, you ask? The now fertilized egg, if left alone…nothing done to it by any outside intervention, will divide on its own and become a full-grown human being. The only thing it needs is nourishment and a safe place to live…just like everyone one of us reading this post today needs. Nothing more, nothing less.

So, from the very instant of conception, there is a living human being, fully capable of growth, and needing only nutrition and safety. Conclusion: Abortion kills a living human being…at any stage of development…from the moment of conception…and we have not even gotten into the religious aspects yet…"

 

[105lynne]

Here you go:

daves-ahumbleservant.blogspot.com/search/label/Abortion

"Yet some will say, “it’s not really a human person until…” and then some random age is given. But let’s look at the science of it. At the very moment of conception, a sperm cell enters an egg cell and the instant result is a cell with a complete strand of human DNA. There is the scientific proof of a human. But, is it “living”?

Yes, it is living. “Proof”, you ask? The now fertilized egg, if left alone…nothing done to it by any outside intervention, will divide on its own and become a full-grown human being. The only thing it needs is nourishment and a safe place to live…just like everyone one of us reading this post today needs. Nothing more, nothing less.

So, from the very instant of conception, there is a living human being, fully capable of growth, and needing only nutrition and safety. Conclusion: Abortion kills a living human being…at any stage of development…from the moment of conception…and we have not even gotten into the religious aspects yet…"

I also have yet to find a pro abortionist answer this question…a woman has a right to her own body, but at what point in her life did that right come into play? How many future women’s rights do we violate every day by aborting them?