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]
• L.E.A.R.N. Inc. and Operation Rescue: see Durham MZCC abortion truck

Slogans

...and discussion thereof.

• "Life is a gift, not a choice."
• "Abortion stops a beating heart."
  • only if the embryo is old enough to have one (apparently happens sometime during weeks 3-5 of pregnancy)
    • According to medical and scientific literature, the heart is in place and beating at 3 weeks after conception. Above claim corrected based on research in response to this counterclaim
  • ...and so does capital punishment, slaughtering animals for food, hunting (for sport or food), and running over animals with a car (deliberately or not). Also, certain medical procedures require stopping the heart temporarily. In other words, the stopping of a heart per se is not morally significant; the context and results of that stoppage are what matters.
• "Your mother chose life."
  • Just because my mother chose it doesn't mean that this was the morally correct/best choice. (Not everyone is happy with having been born, for example.)
  • What if my mother also voted or campaigned for legal abortions? (Arguably, the legality of abortion should be decided entirely by potential and actual mothers...) What if my mother would have chosen not to risk having children if abortion were illegal? In that case, the legality of abortion made it possible for me to be alive.
  • 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.
  • What about someone whose mother later committed suicide? (I know one example personally; did her mother "choose life"?)
• "Abortion: the worst kind of child abuse."
  • Killing an entity with no nerves, much less consciousness, is worse than child abuse?
    • 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.
      • This argument doesn't really answer the original point except by re-stating that abortion is child abuse and going further to assert (without justification) that it is murder – though it does introduce the implicit question of the morality of abortion after the nervous system has begun operation.
      • We'll take it as agreed that killing an embryo with no nervous system, if the mother wishes it, 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. If anyone is seriously proposing that abortion should be illegal before the nervous system has gone into operation, please post here or on the discussion page.
• "As a former fetus, I oppose abortion."
  • As former fetuses, many people support the right to keep it legal. Nobody likes abortion.

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."

Videos

• 2007-07-30 Libertyville Abortion Demonstration: the image on the posters hauled out of the van at the beginning of the video may be the same as this image