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I try to be open-minded and see issues from multiple points of view, and for the most part, I'd say I'm successful. One issue I have a hard time seeing one side of the issue is abortion. I understand pro-choice well enough to understand why some people could be pro-choice, but the fact that more Americans are pro-choice than pro-life is mind-boggling to me. It's incomprehensible because the moral and logical arguments for pro-life seem so much stronger than those for pro-choice.
First off, let me clarify my stance. I think it's okay for a woman to have an abortion in cases of rape/incest or when her life is in danger because those are cases when her choices have been limited, but when a woman chooses to have sex and her life isn't in danger, she shouldn't be able to choose to kill her unborn child. (I know other pro-lifers think that women should be able to have an abortion when the child's health is danger, but I'm not quite sure about the reasoning behind that one, so I'm leaving it out.) For the rest of this post, I'll be focusing on normal circumstances that aren't related to rape, incest, or life endangerment (see tables 2 and 3 on pages 113-114 for reasons why women get abortions).
The U.S. government was created to protect the people's rights, but when two people's rights run into each other, it's not always easy to tell which person's rights should take precedence. Abortion is an example of this. An abortion is an event that involves the lives of two individuals: the mother and the unborn child. They each have something at stake. At stake for the mother is a pregnancy, which is a notoriously unpleasant experience, and the labor of childbirth, which is said to be the most painful experience ever. It's understandable that women would not want to go through those experiences. After her pregnancy, she can give the child up for adoption. For the child, it's a matter of life and death. His/her very life is at stake. The most basic human right. A right that is guaranteed under the Declaration of Independence. Eighty years, give or take, of living, can disappear before he/she is even born.
Nine months vs. an entire lifetime. It seems clear that the child has more at stake, and the law should reflect that.
Of course, there's the question of when human life begins. To me, the answer is simple: conception. Human life begins at conception. That's simply the easiest point to say it begins. A single celled bacteria is considered alive, so why wouldn't a single celled human? Of course, we kill bacteria without a thought, but surely we'd hold human life with a higher regard. Wouldn't we?
The entire pro-choice argument is based on dehumanization. First off, it's not called killing an unborn human. It's called abortion. And it's not even really a human. It's a zygote, embryo, or fetus. It's in a stage of human development, but it's not in a stage of life (don't ask me how that makes sense). Or worse yet, it's my body [shudders]. If it was your body, this wouldn't be an issue. The reason you want an abortion is because there's someone else's body inside you.
Have we learned nothing from dehumanizing blacks, women, American Indians, gays, etc.? When are we going to learn that dehumanizing a human being is bad?
There are a few pro-choice arguments that I've seen that I'd like to tear apart. First is the assertion that a woman's decision to have an abortion is a private matter, so neither the government nor anyone else should be able to have any say in the matter. It's nobody else's business. The truth is that whenever somebody is killed, it's everybody's business. When there's a mass shooting, it's everybody's business. When someone gets killed by a distracted driver, it's everybody's business. When soldiers are being killed, it's everybody's business. Whenever anyone is killed, it's everybody's business to say, "This isn't right. This shouldn't happen. How can we fix this?" So when hundreds of thousands of unborn children are being killed every year - the number one cause of death, incidentally - it's everybody's business.
As a side note, I was pretty shocked when I found out that abortion is the number one cause of death in the United States. I saw it as a post on Facebook, and since so many things that are shared on Facebook are untrue, I figured it was just another case of political propaganda. However, I checked it out with the CDC, and it's completely true. The number of abortions in 2011 was 730,322. (2011 was the latest year I could find information for. If anyone can find more recent information from a reliable source, be sure to let me know.) The number of people killed by heart disease that year was 596,399. (Speaking of dehumanizing, how about not putting abortion on the cause of death list?) What kills me is that not only is this somehow okay, but it's somehow desirable. People fight for the right for this state of affairs to continue. It's mind-boggling.
The second argument I'd like to address is the claim that men would make it even easier to get abortions if they got pregnant instead of women. There's no way to verify this, of course, but it's probably true. However, this essentially boils down to a "everybody's doing it" argument. If men had abortions instead of women, it would still be wrong in most cases. I feel confident saying that I'd be against abortion if roles were reversed because there are pro-life women.
Third, there's an argument about gathering stem cells from killed children for research to cure diseases. All I have to say about that is that it's very sad that we're willing to sacrifice the most innocent and vulnerable part of our population to extend our lives. Is it really worth it? No.
It's unlikely that the abortion laws in our country will change. but I think we can make changes to lower the number of abortions. Women have legitimate concerns that should be addressed. Let's tell men that it's not okay to abandon a woman and child. Let's ensure that women get wages and salaries equal to men. Let's make sure that they get paid maternity leaves. Let's get them monetary help if they need it. Let's eliminate rape and sexual crimes. Let's give teenagers quality sexual education. Let's ensure that preventative birth control is cheap, effective, and available.
But let's not allow the number one cause of death to be abortion.
Random notes:
ReplyDelete"other pro-lifers think that women should be able to have an abortion when the child's health is [in] danger"
My guess is they don't want their child to grow up with a severe disability.
"[Life:] The most basic human right. A right that is guaranteed under the Declaration of Independence."
Incidentally, that would be my argument for universal health care and free food.
"A single celled bacteria is considered alive, so why wouldn't a single celled human?"
Gametes are alive, too. And as far as I know, no (reasonable and educated) person argues that a living zygote is not alive. But maybe that it's not a human. Our language reflects that idea - "It's a girl!" *It.* They're not socially considered to be a human being until they're born. In some ways, not even children are considered to be human beings - they're not give the same rights, after all, and they're often not taken seriously. But I digress.
You'd think at the very least abortion would be illegal once brain activity starts.
1. I think you're right about the disabilities thing, but I feel like I've known too many people with disabilities for it to make sense to kill someone to prevent a disability. A person with a disability can live a happy, full life.
Delete2. Solid argument.
3. If it's not a human, what is it? Is it a monkey or bacteria or squid, or fish that magically transforms into a human before it's born? No, it's a human the entire time. Illegal once brain activity starts is better than nothing, but conception is when human life starts.
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DeleteIt's good that you're willing to address this important and sensitive topic. Most people aren't even willing to form an opinion about it.
DeleteStill, it'd bolster your position quite a bit if you were to explain the actual reason why it's wrong to kill the unborn human. Here, you seem to be making the claim that because it's wrong to kill one human, it's wrong to kill another. If that logic were valid, it'd also be true that because one human breathes air, so does another. It'd be true that because one human is macroscopic, so is another. It'd be true that because one human has a brain, so does another. All of these claims are clearly false.
As these examples illustrate, it's obviously not logically valid to assert that because two entities are members of the same category, they must have the same properties. The fact that it's morally wrong to kill an air-breathing, macroscopic human with a brain like us does not necessarily imply that it's wrong to kill a non-breathing, microscopic, brainless human like the abortion victims.
Furthermore, if we were to assume that the micro-human has the same moral status as a macro-human, we'd also have to acknowledge that the micro-human has no more right to occupy a woman's uterus than we do.
The real reason that it's morally wrong to kill the micro-human is because the micro-human would prefer to live. You just have to consider what it actually means for something to be morally wrong, and then it's obvious.