Anti-abortion

Overview

The anti-abortion viewpoint, most commonly found under the larger umbrella of the more appealing term "pro-life", refers to the view that abortion is wrong, regardless of the reason, and should be illegal in most if not all cases

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Groups

• Army of God: "a pro-life organization that honors those who murder abortion providers as 'heroes'" according to [1]

Slogans

• 1 Life is a gift, not a choice.
• 2 "Abortion stops a beating heart."
  • 2.1 only if the embryo is old enough to have one (apparently happens sometime during the 5th to 8th weeks of pregnancy), and so does capital punishment, eating meat (until vat-grown meat is available, anyway), hunting (for sport or food)...
    • 2.1.1 According to medical and scientific literature, the heart is in place and beating at 3 weeks after conception.
• 3 "Your mother chose life."
  • 3.1 Not everyone is happy with this, despite popular assumption. Or, in other words, just because my mother chose it doesn't mean that this was the morally correct/best choice. (What if my mother also voted for legal abortions? Arguably, the legality of abortion should be decided entirely by potential mothers...)
  • 3.2 How is this an argument against abortion? If it were illegal, I might grow up never being sure that "my mother chose life", because she had no choice.
  • 3.3 What about someone whose mother later committed suicide? (I know one example personally; did her mother "choose life"?)
• 4 "Abortion: the worst kind of child abuse."
  • 4.1 Killing an entity with no nerves, much less consciousness, is worse than child abuse?
    • 4.1.1 This entity is a human being whose nervous system is developing at about 3-5 weeks after conception; abortion is in fact a form of child abuse, though, no less and no more grave than any other child killed.
      • 4.1.1.1 This obviously needs to be split into two ethical questions: (a) the morality of killing an embryo before the nervous system has developed, and (b) the morality of killing an embryo after the nervous system is in place.
        • 4.1.1.1a Killing an embryo with no nervous system should not be regarded as any more immoral than killing a plant, never mind being comparable to the abuse of a fully-formed child who not only feels physical pain but can also feel the loss of love and hope. Claiming that the former is even equivalent to the latter would show tremendous insensitivity toward children. (Is anyone seriously proposing that abortion before the nervous system has formed should be illegal?)
        • 4.1.1.1b The (im)morality of killing an embryo with a nervous system is more arguable.
• 5 "As a former fetus, I oppose abortion."
  • 5.1 As a former fetus, I support it.

Links

Filed Links

1. redirect template:links/smw

News & Views

• 2007-11-06 A Fresh Challenge to the Religious Right's View of Abortion by Frederick Clarkson: according to a new book by Gary Willis, "Much of the debate over abortion is based on a misconception, that this is a religious issue, that the pro-life advocates are acting out of religious conviction. It is not a theological matter at all. There is no theological basis for either defending or condemning abortion. Even the popes have said that it is a matter of natural law, to be decided by natural reason."