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Oct. 24th, 2011 06:23 pm
A few random thoughts on abortion
Based on a Slate article someone linked on Twitter ...
I think some pro-choice folks are being a bit disingenuous about their definitions of life. Truly, unless there's something biologically wrong, a fertilized egg is a form of human life. A very tiny, barely formed version, but yes. It's alive, and it's human, and barring the thousands of things that can go wrong with a pregnancy, it'll emerge as a separate human being in ~40 weeks.
An abortion, assuming an otherwise-healthy zygote/embryo/fetus, is therefore the willful killing of a potentially viable separate human being.
But you know what? I can live with that. Because I don't think every human life, in and of itself, is sacred. I think we should avoid killing if at all possible. I think we should exhaust all attempts at diplomacy before we engage in war. I think we should exhaust all attempts at rehabilitation before we serve the death penalty. I think we should do what we can to heal and mitigate pain and suffering before we consider euthanasia.
But I also think that the quality of life matters more (significantly more, in some cases) than life itself. And that includes the quality of life for those affected by the other human in question. If killing a dictator means the end of suffering for the thousands under his regime, then so be it. If the only way to save people from a guy on a killing spree is taking him down, fire away. If the only organ donor for a dying man is someone who can ill afford the risks of surgery for the donation, then fine. The guy dies. And if the only way a girl or woman with an unintended pregnancy will go on to have a healthy, productive life is by killing the embryo inside her, then go to it.
We are far, far too squeamish about death in and of itself, and spend far too much effort on avoiding it, when we should be focusing on improving the quality of life when we have it. Am I going to die sooner because I can't stand the severe pain and exhaustion that accompany hardcore workouts? Probably. Do I care? Not really. I'm mentally healthier than I would be if I spent hours suffering humiliation and pain in a gym, and that alone is probably cancelling out at least half the potential damage associated. I'm generally a long-range sort of person, but there truly are some things for which the shorter-term negatives vastly outweigh longer-term positives. Abortion, for the women who need to choose it, is one of those things.
I spose this is where my utlitarian sensibilities kick in. I want the best quality of life for the maximum number of people, and on some occasions, that does mean that a few outliers may end up getting screwed. And honestly, I have no problem with that. An embryo that may someday become a separate person does not have greater value in the world than the owner of the uterus that it's camping out in.
Which leads me to the other issue I have with prolife rhetoric: the fact that the majority of their efforts are concentrated solely on the pre-birth life of existing embryos, and not on the lives of people who are already born--even babies. You don't exactly see them lobbying for universal healthcare for kids, right? So if some poor urchin dies of a curable illness because her parents couldn't afford care, oh, well. But heaven forbid allowing her mother to have aborted the thing in the first place, rather than suffering through the agony of watching her suffer and die and not being able to do a damned thing about it. In the minds of the people who believe this is OK, they justify it by saying that the suffering of a child is proper punishment for whatever sins her parents committed--having sex, being poor, etc. So much for their championing of innocents.
The greatest lie of the prolife movement is that they don't spend even an iota of effort on helping to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place, which would prevent millions of abortions. If they really cared about those embryos, instead of using that caring as an excuse to moralize about the behavior of the girls and women carrying them, they would do everything in their power to make sure they never existed in the first place. They'd be working on foolproof contraception. They'd be working on universal mental health care. They'd be working to end rape. None of this screwing around with abstinence education. They KNOW that doesn't work, and yet they flog away at it anyway, because their real goal has jackall to do with life, and everything to do with controlling women's sexual freedom, either for religious reasons, or out of some twisted concept of encouraging "personal responsibility."
I imagine that there are some prolife folks who really are walking the talk, and doing everything they can to stop abortion before it's even necessary, and to ensure the health and well-being of the children who might otherwise have been aborted. But I'd be shocked if they constituted more than 5% of the number of people who describe themselves thus. And until those folks become the majority of the movement, I'm always going to call bullshit on any rhetoric spewed about the sanctity of those innocent zygotes.
Comments screened because I'm not interested in debating this topic. Any arguments to the contrary would simply make me reiterate what I've said above, and I hate having to repeat myself.
I think some pro-choice folks are being a bit disingenuous about their definitions of life. Truly, unless there's something biologically wrong, a fertilized egg is a form of human life. A very tiny, barely formed version, but yes. It's alive, and it's human, and barring the thousands of things that can go wrong with a pregnancy, it'll emerge as a separate human being in ~40 weeks.
An abortion, assuming an otherwise-healthy zygote/embryo/fetus, is therefore the willful killing of a potentially viable separate human being.
But you know what? I can live with that. Because I don't think every human life, in and of itself, is sacred. I think we should avoid killing if at all possible. I think we should exhaust all attempts at diplomacy before we engage in war. I think we should exhaust all attempts at rehabilitation before we serve the death penalty. I think we should do what we can to heal and mitigate pain and suffering before we consider euthanasia.
But I also think that the quality of life matters more (significantly more, in some cases) than life itself. And that includes the quality of life for those affected by the other human in question. If killing a dictator means the end of suffering for the thousands under his regime, then so be it. If the only way to save people from a guy on a killing spree is taking him down, fire away. If the only organ donor for a dying man is someone who can ill afford the risks of surgery for the donation, then fine. The guy dies. And if the only way a girl or woman with an unintended pregnancy will go on to have a healthy, productive life is by killing the embryo inside her, then go to it.
We are far, far too squeamish about death in and of itself, and spend far too much effort on avoiding it, when we should be focusing on improving the quality of life when we have it. Am I going to die sooner because I can't stand the severe pain and exhaustion that accompany hardcore workouts? Probably. Do I care? Not really. I'm mentally healthier than I would be if I spent hours suffering humiliation and pain in a gym, and that alone is probably cancelling out at least half the potential damage associated. I'm generally a long-range sort of person, but there truly are some things for which the shorter-term negatives vastly outweigh longer-term positives. Abortion, for the women who need to choose it, is one of those things.
I spose this is where my utlitarian sensibilities kick in. I want the best quality of life for the maximum number of people, and on some occasions, that does mean that a few outliers may end up getting screwed. And honestly, I have no problem with that. An embryo that may someday become a separate person does not have greater value in the world than the owner of the uterus that it's camping out in.
Which leads me to the other issue I have with prolife rhetoric: the fact that the majority of their efforts are concentrated solely on the pre-birth life of existing embryos, and not on the lives of people who are already born--even babies. You don't exactly see them lobbying for universal healthcare for kids, right? So if some poor urchin dies of a curable illness because her parents couldn't afford care, oh, well. But heaven forbid allowing her mother to have aborted the thing in the first place, rather than suffering through the agony of watching her suffer and die and not being able to do a damned thing about it. In the minds of the people who believe this is OK, they justify it by saying that the suffering of a child is proper punishment for whatever sins her parents committed--having sex, being poor, etc. So much for their championing of innocents.
The greatest lie of the prolife movement is that they don't spend even an iota of effort on helping to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place, which would prevent millions of abortions. If they really cared about those embryos, instead of using that caring as an excuse to moralize about the behavior of the girls and women carrying them, they would do everything in their power to make sure they never existed in the first place. They'd be working on foolproof contraception. They'd be working on universal mental health care. They'd be working to end rape. None of this screwing around with abstinence education. They KNOW that doesn't work, and yet they flog away at it anyway, because their real goal has jackall to do with life, and everything to do with controlling women's sexual freedom, either for religious reasons, or out of some twisted concept of encouraging "personal responsibility."
I imagine that there are some prolife folks who really are walking the talk, and doing everything they can to stop abortion before it's even necessary, and to ensure the health and well-being of the children who might otherwise have been aborted. But I'd be shocked if they constituted more than 5% of the number of people who describe themselves thus. And until those folks become the majority of the movement, I'm always going to call bullshit on any rhetoric spewed about the sanctity of those innocent zygotes.
Comments screened because I'm not interested in debating this topic. Any arguments to the contrary would simply make me reiterate what I've said above, and I hate having to repeat myself.
