Abortion Questions

[FONT=verdana,geneva]It may not be possible to prove that personhood or "ensoulment" begins at conception; however, you cannot prove that personhood does NOT begin at conception. Science has shown that a distinct human life begins at conception. So it is only wise to avoid a possible situation of the destruction of a unique person by respecting this growing, developing entity from conception. "If you must err, err on the side of life" is a famous adage. Scientists for Life note that human life begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg. "These answers are as well established and completely objective as any that science has to offer. These facts are no more a matter of religion than E=mc2 or 1 + 1 = 2. They are not matters of opinion, conjecture, speculation or theory. Rather, they are the expression of reality as determined by scientific observation and analysis. To deny them is to lose touch with reality.[/FONT][FONT=verdana,geneva]Pro-lifers don’t object to terminating pregnancies. Pregnancy is only supposed to last a short time. Therefore, we favor terminating pregnancies at about nine months, naturally or by Cesarean section. The objection is to killing children in – or partly outside – the uterus/birth canal. [make it clear that the intentional taking of the life of a human being is the problem]. It is almost completely unnecessary due to modern medical technology to require the destruction of an unborn child to save the life of his/her mother. Most physicians, if a rare physical problem should arise for the mother, will treat the mother and hope for the best for the unborn child; or, try alternative medications until the child is old enough to deliver. There have even been numerous cases of the unborn child serving as a protective factor for the mother’s health. Recently (2001), a young mother woke from a lengthy coma after the natural birth of her child.[/FONT][FONT=verdana,geneva]Major polls conducted over the last few years consistently show that the majority of people are opposed to abortion-on-demand for the reasons that 98% of all abortions are performed (social, economic, etc.). We all oppose "choice" in the case of someone wishing to commit rape or wishing to beat up family members. "Choice" is not an applicable concept when there are victims. Thus, while many people have been confused by the terms ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’, most are actually pro-life in their views. When someone says killing unborn babies should be a practice protected by law, that tax dollars should pay for it, that teenagers should be able to have abortions without parental consent or knowledge, that fathers should have no right to protect their unborn sons or daughters, and that killing should be allowed for any reason and at any time during pregnancy, where is the ‘choice’? These are pro-abortion views.[/FONT] [FONT=verdana,geneva]When women choose abortion, what are they choosing? The choice is to kill. There is no "fence-sitting" when human life is at stake. Law is a powerful teacher; many are persuaded that when something is legal, it is morally good, or at least, not morally bad. Recent surveys are showing that up to 90% of women who have had abortions felt forced into that "choice" and wish they had not aborted their children. How can an act of despair be referred to as a "choice"?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]"Choice" to abort can be society’s way of telling women not to bug it with their "problem", to just go and get rid of "the problem" so society won’t have to deal with it. "Choice" to abort is used as a rationalization for failing to give pregnant women support to which they are entitled and, after the abortion, to belittle the pain felt by women who have experienced it.[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva]Miriam J. Barth notes, "Freedom to decide when to conceive a child is a far different freedom than the freedom to take the life of a child once conceived…In light of the many achievements of the women’s movement, it is sad that many radical feminists see women’s right to self-determination as dependent upon the right to destroy other human beings, the children of their wombs."[/FONT] [FONT=verdana,geneva]I agree that women should have the right to choose, and the REAL choice comes in the bedroom. If women are really powerful and "equal" to men, let them communicate and work out an understanding with the man prior to conception, not take out their frustration on a helpless little child. Often, abortion advocates portray women as weak, vulnerable wimps who must give men all they want (blame men for their problems); then they turn around and demand that women are totally in charge of their destinies with total "control over their bodies" (blame their babies for their problems) because they allow the abortionist (usually a male) to violate their bodies and destroy their preborn babies. The abortion advocates cannot have it both ways! Attached to every "freedom" is a "responsibility" – abortion is the result of freedom to choose without taking the responsibility for the new human being formed in the process. Our choices reflect our values…[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva]Abortion has become a widely used method of birth control in the U.S. and almost 60% of the women procuring abortions in 1997 reported that they were using a chemical or barrier type of birth control the month they became pregnant; abortion then becomes a back-up birth control method. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]By 1988, 43% of all abortions were repeat abortions and this figure is still accurate today. In 1990, more than 1.6 million abortions were performed in the U.S. (this figure dropped to 1.5 million in 1992 and has continued a slow downward trend through 1997, according to the CDC and AGI). [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]About 1% of these abortions are performed for reasons of rape and/or incest and, at the very most, 7% are performed to protect the mother’s physical or emotional health or life. Abortion advocates stress the ‘hard cases’ and fail to mention the other 92%-98%, about 1.3 million abortions performed each year for social, emotional, and financial reasons.[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva]First we should understand that if we were to allow abortions only for rape or incest victims, there would not be enough abortions to keep abortion centers open. Those abortions would have to be done at medical facilities where more individual attention to the woman’s case would be expected. Would anyone argue that more individual attention is needed in rape or incest cases? In the case of continuing abuse, social workers and law enforcement must look into stopping the abuse. Abortion helps to cover up abuse.[/FONT] [FONT=verdana,geneva]The assembly-line nature of modern abortion centers is the worst possible system for incest victims or victims of sexual child abuse. Not only is the crying need for intervention to stop the abuse not met, but the abortion center may actually participate in the abuse by making it easier for the perpetrator to cover up the crime. Advocates of continuing the current system of assembly-line abortion centers are ignoring the needs of these victims of continuing sexual abuse.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]All human beings have rights which must be protected. A woman has a right to protect her own body. Her child has rights, beginning with the right to continued life. The preborn child is separate and distinct from the mother genetically, and has her/his own blood type, heart, brain, other organs, and may have differently colored eyes, hair, and complexion, or even a different sex. Being dependent on others should not deprive a helpless human being of her/his fundamental rights. [/FONT][FONT=verdana,geneva]What kind of control are we talking about? A control that allows for violence against another human being is a macho, oppressive kind of control. Women rightly object when others try to have that kind of control over them, and the movement for women’s rights asserts the moral right of women to be free from the control of others. When women feel that a pregnant body is a body out of control, deviant, diseased, they are internalizing attitudes of low self-esteem toward the female body. These attitudes contradict the rightful feminist affirmation of pregnancy as a natural bodily function which deserves societal respect and accommodation. [/FONT] [FONT=verdana,geneva]How can women ever shed a "second-class" status as long as they are seen as requiring surgery in order to avoid it? Nature does not provide for inequality and it is an insult to women to say women must change their biology in order to fit into society. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]Why should women have to become like men in order to be successful? Kate Michelman (President, National Abortion Rights Action League) has said, "We have to remind people that abortion is the guarantor of a woman’s…right to participate fully in the social and political life of society." [NY Times, 5/10/88] But pregnant women and new mothers can participate fully in the social and political life of society, and if there are barriers to this, it’s the fault of society, not the women.[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva]If abortion were not the taking of the life of a human being, then applying the right to privacy could be reasonable. When the right to privacy is used to cover violence against women or children in domestic abuse, it is intolerable. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]The abortion debate concerns whether or not violence is done in the abortion. If not, then the reason for opposing it as a matter of public policy disappears and an appeal to privacy rights isn’t even necessary. But if it is violence, then surely privacy has nothing to do with it. [/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva]For the most part, because some who oppose abortion do so on religious grounds does not make abortion a religious issue anymore than the opposition by religious people to driving after drinking makes drunk driving a religious issue. Some who opposed slavery, the Jewish Holocaust, and mistreatment of American Indians were religious people, also; but these inhumane acts have not been deemed ‘religious issues’. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]The majority of our laws are based on a moral code. Those who seek to change abortion laws are legislating morality, but so were those who sought to legalize abortion in the 60s and with the US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions in 1973. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]OR…Susan B. Anthony was not imposing her religious views when she called abortion "Child-Murder" any more than she was imposing her religious views when she advocated that women should have the vote. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]There are many atheists and agnostics in the pro-life movement.
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[FONT=verdana,geneva]As Thomas Jefferson once wrote: "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government." The real issue is whether the government will fulfill its responsibility to protect and preserve life, OR continue to allow this most fundamental human right to be denied. Pro-abortion advocates forget that the government legalized abortion in 1973. Pro-abortionists want the government to fund abortions and to provide abortion facilities in every hospital; they just do NOT want the government to protect the lives of the preborn.[/FONT][FONT=verdana,geneva]Every major pro-life group opposes penalizing the women who get abortions. The goal of the pro-life movement is to stop the killing of prenatal children, to make abortion unthinkable. A large part of the pro-life movement is composed of women, many of whom have had abortions. Penalties are only desired for the abortionists who make their money from the fear and desperation of abandoned women. [/FONT] [FONT=verdana,geneva]Abortion advocates produced unverifiable statistics that thousands of women died from unsafe, illegal abortions in order to help legalize abortion in 1973. Now some of them admit their claims were fabricated in order to gain support for changing the law. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]Actually, in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion-on-demand, there were only 39 deaths in the U.S. from illegal abortion. Ever since the introduction of antibiotics, the number of maternal deaths had been dropping. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]Even one such death is a tragedy, of course; but the way to prevent women from dying is not to continue the destruction of their children. True compassion dictates that mothers should be offered positive alternatives to abortion – let’s love them both.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]Unplanned pregnancy does not necessarily mean an unwanted baby. Many women report that pregnancies they did not plan resulted in babies who were much loved and wanted after birth. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]Legalizing abortion has not reduced child abuse; in fact, it has risen dramatically. So has the tragedy of babies found abandoned in the trash or in public commodes. Legalizing abortion has promoted the idea that only "wanted children have value and those who are not wanted, or are a burden, can be destroyed".
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[FONT=verdana,geneva]Whether the abortion is performed early or late, it's the same baby who dies! Justice demands that the law should offer equal protection to all babies at every stage of their development. By the way, the word '‘fetus" is a Latin word which means "young one" or "offspring", very innocent, defenseless terms, just as "adolescent" means "to come to maturity". These are medical terms to describe stages in the whole spectrum of human life.
[/FONT][FONT=verdana,geneva]If end-of-life is determined by no heartbeat or brainwaves, shouldn’t the beginning of human life at least be recognized by the beginning of the heartbeat or brainwaves? The heart begins beating regularly by 25 days after conception, and brainwaves can be recorded by six weeks after conception. [/FONT][FONT=verdana,geneva]Parents and children are not natural enemies. The law should presume that parents have their children’s best interests at heart and that they are more qualified to help their daughter cope with a pregnancy than is an abortionist, who in most cases has never seen the girl until she is on the operating table, and who will obviously profit from her abortion. [/FONT] [FONT=verdana,geneva]Parental consultation and consent is required for minors to have a tooth drilled, to take an aspirin at school, get a driver’s license, or even to go on a field trip. In all other areas of a teen’s life, parental guidance is considered necessary. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,geneva]Is the abortion industry so anxious to operate on her without parental involvement? Is that why the abortion industry works so very hard to fight against parental notification and parental consent laws? Could it be that the monetary gain is more important to the abortion industry than the well-being of these desperate young girls?
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[FONT=verdana,geneva]You were you two minutes after you were born, five minutes before you were born, a month before that, and four months before that. Your life, the life of every human being began at fertilization – when the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg united. This is scientific fact. Nothing was added after fertilization (conception) except the nutrition you received from your mother and the time to grow. When we discuss abortion, we are always talking about a child with a beating heart.[/FONT]

Many pro-choicers compare pregnancy to forced use of one’s body – that which is akin to rape or forced organ donation. They assert the woman’s right to bodily integrity above the rights of the fetus, as no one has the right to force another to undergo mild physical suffering to save the lives of others. Judith Jarvis Thomson elucidated this line of thinking in her famous thought experiment involving a violinist who is hooked up to a person in the middle of the night.
We don’t force people to donate organs to keep others alive; how can we force women to use their bodies to sustain the life of a fetus?
First, Ms. Thomson’s thought experiment: Her analogy is predicated on the unwilling and unknown implantation of a violinist into an innocent sleeper; the friends of the violinist hook him up to the sleeping person, as that person is the only one in the world who can provide sustenance to the violinist. Without this person’s body, the violinist will die: as violinists are people, too, this would be an atrocity. She acknowledges that her thought experiment is limited to cases of rape (where the host body takes no action to cause this situation); nevertheless, she extends it to all instances of abortion.
The most obvious logical fallacy is to take the precise nature of the atrocity and deem it irrelevant. Thomson’s thought experiment – and the idea of being forced to live with another person feeding off of one’s body – is that the host did not volunteer for, consent to, or provide a mechanism for this situation. The abortion debate is focused on the right of a woman to evict the unwanted child balanced against the right of a child to its life. A woman’s volitional act is certainly relevant to an analysis of the first right; the fact that it is not applicable in rare situations does not render it any less important. Ms. Thomson does nothing with her thought experiment save provide a colourable argument to a right to an abortion after rape.
Furthermore, the perspective of the analogy can be reversed: why should the prohibition against forced organ donation not be applied to a woman who seeks an abortion to save her own life? If we do not force organ donation, why may a mother have an operation performed upon the fetus (one which is far more invasive and destructive than a nephronectomy) to save her own life?
The only principle that would allow abortion but preclude forced organ donation is: one may destroy the body of another for one’s own medical gain, so long as one does not actually commandeer any part of that body.

The forced organ donation issue – and Thomson’s thought experiment – neglect to consider several factors: the identity of the person who attaches the two beings together; the fact that, although a right may exist, a remedy for breach of that right does not; and, as per above, the balancing of the right of a woman to her bodily integrity against her child’s right to life.
Stating the obvious: women don’t get pregnant by voodoo, storks, or the patriarchy. While she may be upset that another being requires her body for its very survival, the mother created that need and, more importantly, that child in question. Without her volitional act, her child would not exist. She is hardly in a position to complain that such a need is foisted upon her.
Thomson’s thought experiment and the organ donation analogies fail in that it is always some ephemeral being who creates the violinist’s disease, and it is mere chance that the particular victim is the only person able to sustain the violinist’s life. The more apt analogy is that a woman attaches a violinist to herself, and, by so attaching him, destroys his ability to live independently.
Even beings who are attached together against their will lack the right to kill the other. A Siamese twin is not allowed to kill his brother to prevent his brother’s use of the organs on his half of the body. Biology does not distribute its benefits and burdens equally; we are not allowed to redistribute or alleviate those burdens by bringing harm to each other.
Pro-choicers deem abortion to the exercise of the right to bodily integrity. They forget that a right to something does not mean that every remedy is appropriate. For example, the right to bear arms does not include the right to possess such arms by theft, even if one is too poor to afford his own weaponry. Likewise, women justifiably assert the right to bodily integrity and the right to not have their beings commandeered for the sustenance of another; however, it does not logically follow that abortion is an appropriate mechanism to exercise that right.
The organ donation analogy establishes a right to an artificial womb, if there were to be such a thing; however, it does not establish the right to murder. It does not even logically follow that a child lacks a right to its mother’s womb. Siamese twins have a right to each other’s bodies; does that right evaporate simply because one person benefits more from the interconnectedness than the other?
A woman who asserts her right to bodily integrity does not give up her corresponding duty to exercise her right without aggressing against another person. There is no means by which a woman can cease to be pregnant without harming her child; thus, we have a right without a remedy.

Pro-choicers often say that a fetus, without consciousness, feelings, people who love it, or many other abilities shared by humans should not have the trump card against a sentient, feeling woman with the challenges of life in front of her.
Why should a blob of tissue have more rights than I have?
First of all, as a matter of fetal development, the heart beats approximately three weeks after conception (five weeks after last period); at that time, major organs also begin to develop and blood circulates throughout his body. At this time, a woman may not even know that she is pregnant, only being a week past her missed period. So the “blob of tissue” argument isn’t really relevant to the abortion debate.
Even if it were, the underlying idea is that sentience is the standard by which we judge the value for life. A person who is sentient has the moral high ground over someone who is not; the latter person’s very life may be taken away for the mere convenience of the sentient person. There are two problems with this idea: the theory that the person with the ability to make a decision has the moral right to make it; and that, taken to its logical conclusion, the argument results in some gruesome possibilities.
The basis of civilised society is that decisions are not made by physical force. Feminism has, for years, fought the idea that since a husband has the ability to force sex on his wife, it is his prerogative to do so. Abortion is a lot like marital rape: one party asserts a right, based on physical pleasure and higher standing in society, to inflict the most horrific of acts against the other person. We also saw this idea with slavery and child abuse and have long outgrown the idea that physical and political strength results in moral dominance. Abortion is the last great civil rights battle – oddly, one opposed by those who fight for everyone else.
That doesn’t explain why a sentient woman should suffer for this blob of cells, though: the decision to remain pregnant is hardly without complications, health risks, and fear. Yet, taking the idea that the non-sentient may be killed for the sentient, why do we allow people in persistent vegetative states to remain alive? There are between 15,000 and 40,000 people in PVS in the United States every year and another 100,000 who are minimally conscious. There are over 96,000 people on organ waiting lists today, and one will die every ninety minutes (approximately 6,000 per year). Why allow the Terry Schiavo’s of the world to live (well, not in her case, sadly) when there are sentient humans who are dying for lack of organs? That person could save the lives of several loved, productive, and sentient humans.
As a civilised society, we don’t force innocent people to die, even if it would save several lives (see above), and even if the innocent people in question lack basic consciousness and have no hope of leading a full life. There is no reason then that we should allow the killing of a non-sentient human based on nothing more than the desire of another human, especially when that non-sentient human has every chance of growing into a fully functional, emotional, and intellectual person.

legally and morally, we do not condone everything that happens to be good for a person or a group of people. We do not condone robbery, although that happens to be good for the poor; one can still call himself an advocate for ending poverty without wanting to decriminalise theft.
Is abortion, though, comparable to theft? The pro-abortion group claims that the right to control one’s reproduction is a fundamental right; abortion is the manifestation and exercise of that right. One could extend this logic, however, to rape: no one should determine when and how an adult human seeks sexual gratification, as human sexuality shouldn’t be dictated by others; a rapist is merely exercising his fundamental right to control his sexual desire.
Nearly all actions that a rational human wants to engage in are, ultimately, self-serving and good for that person (at least in the short term). Yet, we criminalise some of them because they intrude upon the rights of others. Rape intrudes upon the right to bodily integrity of the victim; even though the claimed right (sexual fulfillment) is deemed to be fundamental by both conservatives and liberals, we do not allow that right to be exercised in this particular manner. We do not happen to care if the male in question is incapable of finding another method to experience human sexuality: the proposed method is wrong, regardless of the presence or absence of alternatives.
Likewise, whether or not a woman has another method of ensuring that she can plan her family and reproduction as she deems fit, abortion (the deliberate ending of a human life) is not acceptable. This pachyderm would not care if there were artificial wombs that unwanted children could be moved into – sounds like a great thing. The absence, however, of any other method for a woman to not be pregnant does not automatically entitle her to kill her child to accomplish that goal.
First premise: abortion is good for women.
As usual, the pachyderm will not engage in the theological reasoning behind how abortion is not good for women (although she believes that theology supports her position as well): secular reasons are sufficient. From an evolutionary perspective, humans are designed to have a relatively small number of children and to heavily invest in those children (k-selected reproduction). As such, we are designed to feel the most profound grief upon losing a child. We are not fruit flies, for whom one offspring hardly matters; we are made to attach deeply to our children as a means of survival.
Abortion has the same psychological effect as miscarriage, except with added guilt. Over 90% of women regret their abortions; six times as many women who had abortions are members of National Right to Life as are members of NARAL; 70% of relationships end after an abortion; women mourn the anniversary of the baby’s death; abortion may double the risk of infertility; and abortion, like second-trimester miscarriage, increases the risk of breast cancer. Furthermore, RU-486 causes severe haemorrhage in at least 2% of the women who take it, so they need surgical intervention. (A dear pachyderm friend had this happen to her.) Teenage girls who have abortions commit suicide at ten times the rate of their peers (another reason to have parental consent laws!) and 18% of women with post-abortive trauma have attempted suicide more than once.
Good for women? Young, single men are the largest supporters of a “woman’s right to choose.” Conveniently, abortion allows them to have sex without consequences (in the days of those pesky paternity tests, they cannot claim that the child is not their’s), and, in fact, allows them to have sex without contraception. Is it any wonder that date rape has become much more prevalent in the age of abortion on demand? What sane man would have sex with a woman he barely knows when he would have to fork over 17% of his salary for the next 18 years?
Of course, let’s not forget the fact that Planned Parenthood repeatedly ignores the issues of statutory rape in the young women who come in seeking abortions. For older men who seek to exploit and pressure young women, abortion is a godsend. A few hundred dollars ensures that he will not be incarcerated for his crime.
Kevin at Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee has a great post about how 91% of PP clinics agreed to conceal statutory rape, despite mandatory reporting requirements.
Abortion is often framed against biological reality: as only women can become pregnant, abortion is a feminist issue. The people who put forth this argument miss a fundamental point: abortion does not shift the burdens and consequences of sexual intercourse from women onto men, but rather, some remain with the woman and some are shifted to her baby. Abortion does not make men pregnant; it does not equalise the burden of reproduction or sexual action; and it does not eradicate the burden from women (see above). It is not an elixir to undo the inequality foisted upon women by happenstance of biology: the pregnancy (and its ending) still weigh more heavily upon women than men.
For this reason, many of us consider abortion to the be the ultimate exploitation of women.

The pro-life movement is often portrayed as male, Christian, and socially conservative. Most pro-choice people believe that the only justification for abortion is a religious one, such that outlawing abortion is an imposition of morality and religious beliefs on the public. The newest pro-choice argument is:
Abortion is legislating morality; the only people who oppose abortion do so for religious reasons. (In other words: you can’t be a pro-life libertarian.)
Many of our laws have a policy basis (such as environmental regulations) that do not fit within a traditional moral structure. There are many things that people find to be immoral that are legal (such as drinking, smoking, gambling, or, in Nevada, prostitution). The prohibitions against murder, rape, theft, and incest all correlate to religious prohibitions; yet, not many people say that we should make murder legal, because outlawing it is “legislating morality.” Obviously, morality is both over-inclusive and under-inclusive in terms of deciding what to regulate. Nevertheless, the fact that some of our laws happen to correlate with traditional or religious prohibitions does not stop us from outlawing that.

It is not enough to say that we can legislate that which has a moral basis: the question is whether abortion is more like theft or gambling. Is this something that, although it may be immoral, should be legal anyway?
The basic libertarian philosophy opposes the inititation of force against another person: there is the right to do anything, so long as it does not intrude upon the life, liberty, or property rights of another person. The Libertarian Party says, “We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose…. Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. We must accept the right of others to choose for themselves if we are to have the same right. Our support of an individual’s right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices. We believe people must accept personal responsibility for the consequences of their actions.”
Ayn Rand said, [FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]“There are no ‘rights’ of special groups,… there are no ‘rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn.’ There are only the Rights of Man — rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals.” ([/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights,” The Objectivist Newsletter, co-edited and published by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, vol. 2, #4 (April 1963), p. 13.) [/FONT]John Locke, who advocated for a very limited government, believed that it was the purpose of government to protect people’s rights to life, liberty, and property.
Oddly, though, many libertarians do not extend those principles to abortion. Many pro-choicers believe that the correct stance for a libertarian is to oppose government intrusion into the private decision of a woman. The pro-choice position, however, is inconsistent with the principles above.
The only way that a libertarian could oppose the use of force against another human, but be pro-abortion, is to think that a fetus is not a human worthy of protection against aggression. In the alternative, they may believe that women should be exempt from the personal responsibility requirements of libertarianism. Libertarians believe, generally, that if your own actions get you into trouble, it is not the job of the government to bail you out nor to sanction the use of force against others to ameliorate the situation.
The progeny of two humans is always a human. That’s just biology. While libertarians believe that one human should not live at the expense of another, this does not apply to abortion. Between two people, the woman who could prevent the pregnancy and risked it, and the fetus who is incapable of preventing its dependence upon its mother, the harm should rest upon the person who could prevent the situation. A rational actor, knowing that pregnancy is undesirable, could abstain, use birth control (over half of women who abort do not use birth control), or could use redundant methods of birth control. Either way, she is able to prevent the undesirable state (pregnancy) that she seeks to ameliorate, while her child can neither prevent its dependence upon a woman who does not want it, nor lead an independent existence.
Many pro-abortionists state that abortion is justifiable because sex is enjoyable and therefore, one should be able to have it simply for enjoyment. A government prohibition on abortion, in the eyes of a pro-choicer, amounts to the imposition of a view of sex as procreative only. To a libertarian, that argument is a non-starter. The enjoyment of an action does not excuse one from its consequences: there is no libertarian philosophy that one is always entitled to solely pleasurable actions. The government may not interfere with someone who tries to seek pleasure (such as by outlawing extramarital sex), but may always prevent him from achieving his ends by depriving another person of life, liberty, or property. Outlawing rape does not impose a narrow view of sex on the populace: it merely stops the rapist from achieving his ends at the expense of another person. The utility of the ends is immaterial to a libertarian; only the methodology is important.
From a libertarian perspective, harm should not be shifted from the actor onto another human (or society in general). When the government does not prosecute abortion, it sanctions the taking of human life. That isn’t libertarianism; that’s anarchy.

Pro-choicers love to say that pro-lifers are hypocrites: elective abortion happens less frequently than spontaneous abortion (i.e. where the embryo cannot survive due to extreme abnormalities or the body rejects it). Therefore, if we were really concerned with fetal life, we would work on methods to save those babies, too.
If you were really pro-life, you would want to save the babies who are spontaneously aborted. Look at that loss of life! Furthermore, if God puts a soul into the babies at the moment of conception, why does He then allow them to die?

Like most pro-abortion talking points, it fits well on a bumper sticker but doesn’t hold much weight upon closer scrutiny. As usual, let’s analogise:
Imagine that the polio vaccine had never been invented; as a result, half of all children die from the disease. Further imagine a society in which half of the remaining children are tortured and killed. Would it be acceptable to condone the torture and killing under the theory that more of them die from natural causes? Would it be acceptable to rape all young women and condemn their champions as hypocrites for not eliminating another threat to their health?

Under the Leftist theory of “You can’t be for life unless you eliminate natural causes of death,” they should have no interest in protecting senior citizens. After all, those people often die from natural causes, so there should be no problem murdering them until we can eliminate the natural causes of death. First of all, it’s obviously amoral and absurd. Moreover, the math doesn’t work out. If we eliminate most causes of death in the 80-90 year old group, those people will live to be centenarians. We then must either be content with allowing murder of the 100+ club, or we must find ways to eliminate natural causes of death for that age bracket. If it’s the latter, the cycle will continue ad infinitum.
As the Onion once said, human mortality is holding steady at 100%. We will all eventually die; yet, all civilisations have prohibited us from expediting the deaths of its members. Centuries of criminal law have punished the deliberate taking of human life, without any desire to stop all causes of death before doing so. The fact that people die does not give us any right to kill them.
Back in the days of high infant mortality rates, CS Lewis contemplated this very issue. He wrote that, between those who die in utero and those who die before experiencing much life, God intends for His kingdom to be peopled mostly with those who have not had to withstand the temptations of the devil. This is still true today, albeit less so due to advances in medical science.
Perhaps those who die in utero or in infancy are the souls that He creates and intends to have in Heaven, but does not want exposed to Satan. Perhaps he uses miscarriages to test his people, to bring them to Him, or to, in their suffering, make them understand the suffering of Christ on the cross.
Such would be His prerogative and, more importantly, His choice. It would not be for humans to presume to know which souls He had created to live for a short while; it is not for us to determine which ones may never see Earth. We would not presume to know which souls should die young and have limited time on Earth – thus, we do not murder our fellow man. That prohibition against destroying the creation of the Lord is no less true simply because the creation happens to be part of a group that is routinely called to Heaven. (Under this theory, it would also be acceptable to murder senior citizens: after all, He must not intend them to live much longer, anyway.)

Sherry Colb has written a series of pro-choice articles on abortion, arguing over such issues as imprisoning women who seek abortions, rape exceptions, and life exceptions. Without fail, her arguments miss the mark. (Hat tip: Old Ford Road.) Here goes, in no particular order:
Pregnancy is a unique condition that demands special treatment as a matter of simple equality. It is this uniqueness that, in my view, provides the basis for the right to terminate a pregnancy. Forcing a person to share her body with another living creature (whether one classifies it as a “potential person” or as a “person&#8221 for nine months against her will is a grave assault on her bodily integrity, particularly given the sex-specific nature of the burden. (See, here.)
The latter part is the most clearly illogical: abortion is a grave assault on the bodily integrity of a child, and, given the age-specific nature of the burden, we ought to avoid it.
The “sex-specific nature of the burden” argument is a good one in favour of changing government regulations that unfairly target one gender. For example, some colleges are changing their tenure system to acknowledge the fact that women bear children during prime research years. New regulations allow women to work for a longer time before receiving tenure review, to ensure that they have had an equal opportunity to do meaningful research.
We do not, however, use government action to rectify biological inequalities. Women live longer than men; yet, we don’t mandate that women give organs to men to equalise longevity between the sexes. Likewise, the fact that women bear children is no more a cause for legalised murder than is the premature deaths of men an argument for forced organ donations.
Furthermore, the fact that this burden falls more heavily upon women than men does not justify relieving the burden through violence, especially violence against another group. The sex-specific nature of pregnancy would justify, for example, a law which forces fathers to support women during pregnancy, but not pregnant women to support indigent men. No fetus is responsible for the fact that pregnancy affects one group more than another; it certainly should not receive the death penalty for that.
Finally, Prof. Colb assigns too much value to the sex-specific nature of pregnancy. If men were to become pregnant, would she disapprove of abortion? A pregnant woman is not pregnant solely by virtue of being female; it is the result of either sexual intercourse or fertility treatments. She is not a representative of all womankind; she is an individual who is pregnant. In short: womanhood is a necessary factor for, but not a direct cause of, pregnancy.
Prof. Colb makes much ado about the fact that a woman shares her body with another living creature. Heaven only knows what she thinks of the Hensel twins, who are forced into such an existence for their entire lives.
Siamese twins aside, consider this scenario: a woman gives birth in Fargo, North Dakota, during a snowstorm. She and her husband are trapped in the house with food, but no infant formula. She is the only person who may keep that baby alive (via breastfeeding). It is not her fault that her baby cannot eat the leftover Mexican food in the fridge, nor is it her fault that her husband cannot breast-feed the child; yet, almost any criminal justice system in the world would prosecute her for negligent homicide if she were to not breast-feed her child. So we would require that she use her body and its organs to sustain another life, against her will. What justification is there for requiring women to breast-feed to sustain their child’s life (if no other options are available), but deeming pregnancy to be too onerous a burden?
The rape exception: Prof. Colb then takes on idea of “rape exceptions” to abortion. As a matter of full disclosure, this blogger supports such exceptions, as a philosophical matter. (More later.) Now, pro-choicers love rape, because, in their minds, it presents the ultimate catch-22 against the pro-life argument. Either the people are all about punishing women for having sex, or they are so cruel as to force a woman to be pregnant with her rapist’s child. Prof. Colb attacks the philosophical underpinnings of the rape exception:
Take, for example, the case of a baby born of a woman victimized by rape nine months earlier. Assume that the woman had hoped her pregnancy was the product of consensual sex with her husband but learned, when she saw the baby emerge, that her husband could not possibly have been the father. Perhaps she and her husband both have blue eyes, and the baby has brown eyes, like her rapist. There is surely no “rape exception” (nor, I imagine, would anyone want there to be) for infanticide in such a case.
The point, as this elephant understands it, of a rape exception is that women who were raped ought to not carry their rapist’s child to term. After birth, they are free to give the child up for adoption or raise it as they see fit; however, the pregnancy itself may be too emotionally traumatic for them to handle. Such an exception becomes exponentially less rational as the pregnancy wears on: if the first five months were acceptable, why not another four? It surely does not apply after birth; it hardly would even apply after she found out about her pregnancy.
Prof. Colb compares rape and sexual intercourse. She acknoweldges that women who have sex are risking pregnancy, but makes much ado about the fact that such is a possibility, not a certainty. (This is a common pro-choice argument: pregnancy is not a logical consequence of sex, because it doesn’t always happen. Well, yes, but vehicular manslaughter isn’t always a consequence of driving drunk, but we arrest drunk drivers and have the audacity to prosecute them when they haven’t even hurt someone yet! To treat a state as a logical consequence of an action only if it always flows from that action is a radical departure from our jurisprudence.)
If a woman is capable of conceiving, then she is at risk for pregnancy. If she has consensual sex, she may conceive. If she is raped, she may conceive. To guarantee that she will never find herself in a position in which she must either provide intimate care to a developing fetus or terminate a pregnancy, she must disable her reproductive system.
To guarantee that one never dies in a car wreck, one could avoid driving entirely. We recognise a fundamental difference between those who drive drunk or without a properly-functioning car and those who are hit by a drunk driver. Voluntary intercourse is a lot like going into a bar in Boston and yelling, “Go, Yankees!”: you just live with the consequences of what happens to you. A person who is assaulted on the street, however, may seek legal redress: he did not initiate any condition which provoked the state of affairs. Likewise, we need not require that women continually take contraception to avoid becoming pregnant from rape. Prof. Colb incorrectly conflates the requirement to responsibly deal with the logical results of one’s actions (however desirable or not) and an affirmative duty to protect every aspect of one’s life against hypothetical aggression.
Prof. Colb ends her discussion with the age-old stereotype: pro-lifers are just punishing women for having sex, the punishment for which is pregnancy and childbirth. The implied ad hominem attack is great: if pro-lifers want to punish women, the movement must lack any other justification. Ergo, abortion is morally neutral.
From a philosophical standpoint, the rape exception is akin to a severe mental health exception: if a woman is so traumatised by the pregnancy as to attempt suicide, if the pregnancy causes psychosis, or if the mother cannot take psychotropic medications while pregnant, should we permit her an abortion? The rape exception is a per-se severe* mental health exception, one which splits the pro-life community on both issues of rape and of mental health.
*”Severe” being the mental health equivalent of a potentially deadly complication from pregnancy, not the equivalent of, say, morning sickness.

Debunking the Pro-Choice Argument, Part VIII Helvidius, a Pachyderm

the link!

ArteestX said:

Can I make a request? Your cutting and pasting other people's work is just creating a huge wall of text that is extremely difficult to read. And it covers points that no one here is talking about (like having the government pay for abortions). Instead of using others' words, can you just talk to us?

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I am talking I am giving you what I feel is my opinion yes I may have gotten it from others but I agree with them and they can say it better then I can. I am addressing other issues I believe are stupid in the pro-abortion topic.