J
Jordan_Francis
Guest
*In a different forum with many diverse religious people, atheists, agnostics and the like, I posted an argument as to why I feel abortion is an immoral act that should be prohibited by law. I avoided the use of explicit religious arguments, because many of the people reading it were not Christian.
In the course of this I had made statement saying that abortion is analogous to rape.
In short, I was grilled. One poster (a pro-choice Christian at that!) has made repeated statements to try and make me feel stupid, and I was compared to a mad person on the street to which you would not respond.
I’m going to post my words here. I am used to being taken more seriously. I thought my post was relatively reasonable and would be taken, even if people disagreed:*
Rape is all the more horrifying of an act because it includes both obvious and subtle traumatic aspects. The person persists on after the event with a psychological and emotional mark. The fetus of course isn’t afforded the “luxury” of living past this assualt on its essential freedom. And quite often it isn’t in a state where the abortion process is painful. Yet who would argue that a hospital patient in a coma is now open game for the sexual pleasure of others because she would not be aware of it and therefore experience none of its traumatic effects? Non-consciousness does not seem to have any neccessary implications for morality in this case.
The problem with abortion is that it takes what I consider a pornographic view of the human person. The image that you need in your head is that of a photo-frame. The fetus is a life that has begun now at conception and will, by its own volition procced towards fuller and more visible expressions of personhood. What justifying abortion does is freeze this “human with potential” in a frame, ignoring the whole of the fetus by excluding reference to its future reality and viewing it only in terms of the utility if offers us at this particular moment. It is thus framed off at this moment when it looks alien enough to be considered unhuman. The fetus is boxed off and afforded nothing in anticipation of what it is becoming and will become.
But this is an inhuman act in itself. Persons neither evaluate their lives merely by the scope of the moment nor can they value others in this way without grave violence to the human being. Take a newborn child for example. This blubbering, wailing, nearly neuter form is, at birth, dumber than many animals. But we call it cute. We adore it, we treat it as precious. Every child is a mystery because what we appreciate about it is the newness and vulnerability of this life which, we well know, represents a certain point, near the beginning, of the actualization of a great mystery: the mystery of the particular person.
That is to say, we never value children solely as they are in the moment. We value their simplicity, their struggles to comprehend, their wild imagination not only for itself, but also in anticipation of what they are becoming, whatever that exactly may be. The potentiality of the human person, and the mystery of its unfolding, is a constant factor in our appreciation of the whole person.
Likewise, I as a young student value myself not only in what I am today, but also in the unknown that is before me. Anticipating my future and what I might become enriches my present moment and forms part of the totality of my conception of self-worth. (Perhaps this why old age often brings with it a battle against depression. Our visible horizon is increasingly narrowed, so we must find other ways to evaluate self worth; ie. in the hope of heaven, in the life of our children and grandchildren, in positive contributions to society)
This is why to rob someone of their future is such a gravely immoral act. When an Austrian woman was discovered to have been in captivity from birth for 24 years, kept in the basement by her father (this happened recently)I couldn’t help but notice his enforced captivity was an abortive like act in its inner logic. She was “framed in” so to speak and her future was denied. This is precisely what abortion does.
In the course of this I had made statement saying that abortion is analogous to rape.
In short, I was grilled. One poster (a pro-choice Christian at that!) has made repeated statements to try and make me feel stupid, and I was compared to a mad person on the street to which you would not respond.
I’m going to post my words here. I am used to being taken more seriously. I thought my post was relatively reasonable and would be taken, even if people disagreed:*
It is interesting to see this engaged on the level of rhetoric, and not instead the actual locus of the dilemna, which is, as I framed above, not only analogous to the moral question of rape, but the entire moral philosophy of power, autonomy and selfhood:
Father Heathen would have us think this comparison is disgusting because the victim of rape experiences a “horrible and traumatic thing with lasting emotional damage”. But what is clear is that horor or emotional trauma do not in themselves establish the moral imperative. The question revolves around the violation of the human being’s autonomy and a certain right to self determination. It is on these grounds from which the pro-choice argument departs and, ironically, also the pro-life.
Rape is all the more horrifying of an act because it includes both obvious and subtle traumatic aspects. The person persists on after the event with a psychological and emotional mark. The fetus of course isn’t afforded the “luxury” of living past this assualt on its essential freedom. And quite often it isn’t in a state where the abortion process is painful. Yet who would argue that a hospital patient in a coma is now open game for the sexual pleasure of others because she would not be aware of it and therefore experience none of its traumatic effects? Non-consciousness does not seem to have any neccessary implications for morality in this case.
It seems to me that this would not be the case. After the human person has developed bodily, no single cell contains the locus of life. After the brain dies out, none of these cells will proceed by their own volition to become anything.
The problem with abortion is that it takes what I consider a pornographic view of the human person. The image that you need in your head is that of a photo-frame. The fetus is a life that has begun now at conception and will, by its own volition procced towards fuller and more visible expressions of personhood. What justifying abortion does is freeze this “human with potential” in a frame, ignoring the whole of the fetus by excluding reference to its future reality and viewing it only in terms of the utility if offers us at this particular moment. It is thus framed off at this moment when it looks alien enough to be considered unhuman. The fetus is boxed off and afforded nothing in anticipation of what it is becoming and will become.
But this is an inhuman act in itself. Persons neither evaluate their lives merely by the scope of the moment nor can they value others in this way without grave violence to the human being. Take a newborn child for example. This blubbering, wailing, nearly neuter form is, at birth, dumber than many animals. But we call it cute. We adore it, we treat it as precious. Every child is a mystery because what we appreciate about it is the newness and vulnerability of this life which, we well know, represents a certain point, near the beginning, of the actualization of a great mystery: the mystery of the particular person.
That is to say, we never value children solely as they are in the moment. We value their simplicity, their struggles to comprehend, their wild imagination not only for itself, but also in anticipation of what they are becoming, whatever that exactly may be. The potentiality of the human person, and the mystery of its unfolding, is a constant factor in our appreciation of the whole person.
Likewise, I as a young student value myself not only in what I am today, but also in the unknown that is before me. Anticipating my future and what I might become enriches my present moment and forms part of the totality of my conception of self-worth. (Perhaps this why old age often brings with it a battle against depression. Our visible horizon is increasingly narrowed, so we must find other ways to evaluate self worth; ie. in the hope of heaven, in the life of our children and grandchildren, in positive contributions to society)
This is why to rob someone of their future is such a gravely immoral act. When an Austrian woman was discovered to have been in captivity from birth for 24 years, kept in the basement by her father (this happened recently)I couldn’t help but notice his enforced captivity was an abortive like act in its inner logic. She was “framed in” so to speak and her future was denied. This is precisely what abortion does.